RE: Re: Re: FW: RE: Re: Check this out!

I chanced upon this article “Did You Get My Slack/Email/Text?” written by Erica Dhawan on Harvard Business Review recently. So I thought I would also share what I have learnt on the job working with emails, which probably is still the dominant channel of business communication.

If today we were still working in an office, I would also have been someone who would put on a pair of earphones, without anything playing, if I did not want to be disturbed. In most cases, the other party trying to reach out would get the cue and promptly text me on the company’s instant messenger, which I would notice immediately on my screen. The irony.

Instant Messenger and Email work as a pair of tools to get someone’s attention. When I was working in a Korean company, it was second nature to send an instant message to check if someone had read my email that I sent seconds ago, or if he/she had opened it in my Sent folder. Instant messages were to be replied immediately and emails, at the very latest, by the next day. It is attestation to the “palli palli” culture in Korea.

Email systems have evolved to eliminate long strings of “RE:” and “FW:” which make subject lines impossible to read on a mobile device. It serves no particular purpose other than to tell if an email has been forwarded outside of the initial distribution list, and when, if you look through the conversation history.

Other than making it a habit to remove these abbreviations leaving only the most recent one, below are some ways I manage my emails:

• Include the name of the person I am trying to get attention from in the subject line. It is very hard not to click on an email with your name written at the front of the subject line, like being called out by the teacher in class to answer a question. Most email systems now also let you tag a person in the email body, so they would be alerted, but that is different.
• Include “(FYI)” in the subject line if it was an email with reading or reference materials. Do not simply forward an email and expect people to know what to do with it.
• Respect the “To:” and “Cc:” fields.
• If there is an action to follow up, this should be written at the top of the email body and not buried under long paragraphs of text explaining the context. 
• If there is an email that I cannot reply to immediately, I would flag it as a to-do item in the inbox instead of assuming that I will come back to it later.

Are there other practices that work for you?