It’s Time to Write Better Business Emails

3 reasons to invest time in upgrading your email habits

Our crowded inboxes drive us nuts. We resent their intrusion on our lives and the pull they have on our attention when we’re trying to work.

Then we get frustrated when other people don’t respond to the emails we send them.

Plenty of people think that email is broken. In A World Without Email, Cal Newport writes about the cost that the constant stream work-related emails has on actual productivity. It’s a fascinating book, yet even Newport agrees that email will be with us for a long time.

It’s time to confess that we are part of the problem.

• We contribute to cluttered, unmanageable inboxes by writing messy, stream-of-consciousness emails that put the burden on the recipient to make sense of them.
• We don’t include enough information, generating a swarm of follow-up emails.
• We fire off a response quickly to show how responsive we are, without contributing to the discussion.

When we don’t use email with enough intention, we contribute to its burdens for everyone-ourselves included.

Who has time to polish email messages?