let's all agree to keep emails short, and maybe a little less sweet, so that we can get a lot more done.

Re:Re:Fw:Re: = 13 weeks of email every year

How much time do you spend on email? I know, that’s an odd question from a blog post that you may have clicked on because of an email.

According to one study, we spend 28 percent of our time in the office on email. Sound about right to you? I can certainly believe that I spend almost a third of my day reading, responding, and forwarding emails. They are a constant stream of project collaboration, business matters, personal messages from family and friends, advertisements and proposals, and of course spam.

But when you do the math, 48 weeks of work in a year (taking out vacation/holidays/sick days) x 40 hours x 28% = 537.6 hours. Divide that into eight hour days, divide that number by five work days a week, and…

Dealing with email takes up 13 weeks, or over three months of work every year!

Part of that might be because people are usually just too damn nice in an email, starting out with “hellos” and “how are you doings” and schmoozing away whole paragraphs before they get to their point. It’s hard not to, and when I do it, I blame traditional business protocol and my Mom for teaching me to be a Nice Guy.

But I’d much rather you get to the point and tell me what you want, so that I can respond quickly. And I’m sure your members feel the same way about emails from your credit union.

Does this rant mean I want email to go away? Not really. It’s a huge improvement over the old business letter, and I figure it will either evolve or be replaced with whatever the next better thing brings.

Until then, let’s all agree to keep emails short, and maybe a little less sweet, so that we can get a lot more done.

Kent Dicken
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