First Friday Book Synopsis

In the writing skills course that we teach at Creative Communication Network, entitled Write Your Way to Success, we discuss how to handle e-Mails.

Most of our participants claim they write e-Mails as more than 85% of the type of writing they do on the job.

Obviously, writing e-Mails is often responding to other e-Mails.

And, the question is, do you control e-Mail, or does e-Mail control you?

Do you remember the Southwest Airlines commercials a few years ago, where a woman dropped a cake because she heard a “bing” on her computer, announcing an e-Mail?  Or the one where the guy jumped over a cube wall to get to his e-Mail?  They were exaggerated events, but not too far from reality.

You likely remember the synopsis of the book that I presented at our First Friday Book Synopsis entitled The Tyranny of e-Mail by John Freeman (Scribner, 2009).  In that book, he presented a strong set of hints for writing and reading e-Mails, including scheduling a time to read e-Mails so that you concentrate on what you read and what you write, and so that you control e-Mail, instead of it controlling you.  If you missed the original presentation, you can find it on 15MinuteBusinessBooks.com.

I thought this piece published on February 21, 2012 in the Harvard Business Review blog by Amy Gallo, entitled “Stop Email Overload,” was also provacative in the same sense.  Click here to read the entire article.

Think about some of these principles.  How much more productive would you be if you dictated when and how you went through your e-Mail?  What if you decided how e-Mail fit into your day instead of jumping to check it everytime your computer beeped to tell you something new has arrived?

Let’s talk about it really soon!