One Simple Trick to Getting Less Email

Think for a moment about how much email you send every day; not how much you get but how much email you send. If you've got a Sent Mail folder set up have a look at the past few weeks or days of outgoing email.

Chances are it's quite a bit. Email's become quite the ubiquitous tool, and if you're interested in Taming Email, it's likely to be an important part of how you communicate.

Now consider that each and every one of those outgoing messages is request for a response.

I'll be more blunt: every time you send an email you are effectively asking the recipient to send you an email in response.

You may not be asking in the form of some text in the message that says "please reply", but as we've seen in Is a Response Really Required?, many people will respond anyway. And if your email is being sent to a mailing list? You've just asked for multiple responses to your one little email. You'll get more than you give, and in this case that might not be the best thing.

So the simple trick I mentioned?

Send less email to get less email.

Before you send your next email; before you even write it perhaps, but at least before you hit that Send button, ask yourself a few questions:

• Do the people who are about to get your message really need to see it? Yes, I'm asking you to actually question the value of the message you're about to send. The answer may well be "Yes", but it's always worth thinking about it first.

• Are you sending to the right people? Consider everyone who's about to see your message. Do they all need to see it, or would a subset of recipients be more appropriate. Remember, each recipient is an invitation for another response in your inbox.

• Do you want each recipient to respond? This works in two ways - it's another sanity check for making sure you're sending your email to the right person or people, and it's also an invitation to craft your message appropriately.

• Does your message imply a response is expected? Does it need to? Would it be appropriate to actually, specifically, say that no response is required?

• And lastly: is email the right tool for this job? I'll cover this in a future article, but while email is a very powerful and flexible hammer, not everything is a nail.

I don't mean to imply any absolutes in that list. Sometimes your email is quite appropriate and necessary, everyone does need to see your message, you do need to send it to a lot of people, and yes, perhaps all of them need to respond.

But by getting in the habit of asking yourself those questions before sending, you'll actually be reducing your own email load as a result.

And the email loads of others, which is also a nice side benefit.

Just recognize that sometimes that email you're about to send ... perhaps shouldn't be.