Operating Rules for Email Collaboration

Today, while following a blogger/IndieWeb rabbit rail (when I click on a link from someone I follow, and then promptly begin following other links to other sites that interest me), I ran across an excellent post by Naz Hamid on Operating Rules for Email Collaboration, and promptly decided I needed to link to it with light commentary on my site.

I’ve slowly been improving my email usage over time, since my tendency left unchecked is to be verbose. However, I’ve learned that verboseness should not be the norm when communicating via email, as it can cause your thoughts to be lost in the weeds. And now that I am using email much more than earlier in my career, learning to use it well is important.

A few of Naz’s points stuck out to me:

• Clarity and conciseness are your friends.
• Use headers. Or bold them. And even use italics.
• Lists are your best friend.
• Order your asks or feedback in lists by order of importance.
• Read your email before you send it.

I do some of these today (specifically headers, bolding, and italics, and proof-reading of my email before sending… this is where I make heavy use of delayed Send options). But I definitely have room to improve, and I’ll be reviewing his recommendations when authoring emails in the future.

If email is a form of communication you use often, I strongly recommend reading through his whole post (with an example!). And even if it’s not, there is probably some concept that is worth applying to whatever text-based form of communication you do use! 🙂