Tools-series emails-how tools change your productivity

There are many ways to improve personal work efficiency, such as planning and time awareness; concentrate on avoiding parallelism; simplify work and task breakdown; review and review, sum up experience; work and rest, and improve health. This article starts with emails that are used by everyone in daily work, and looks at the association between personal work efficiency and use of tools from the perspective of tool assistance and habit improvement, try to find out the best practices for using emails.

In general, we use tools to improve the process for repetitive or time-consuming work, and to compensate for our own capabilities or weaknesses in our work. As the most typical workplace tool, mail has rich forms of expression in specific software and operations. The knowledge and usage of mail mentioned in this article are mainly for junior users, however, the habits of using tools are sometimes formed. If you use them improperly, it is difficult to integrate them into a team-based approach. Therefore, we recommend that you use them for reference. This article emphasizes the use scenarios, strategies, and principles of tools in the team collaboration mode, and does not focus on the specific operation methods, steps, and uncommon functions of the tools.

1. emails

When will we use emails? I personally think it is appropriate to use emails when multiple parties need to collaborate with each other and the timeliness is not strong, the details need to be clarified, the status should be tracked, the tasks should be arranged, and historical records should be backed up. Email is a typical "Push mode" in the communication mode. It has a clear audience but is not suitable for version information management. What are the advantages of using mail? Email provides us with process records, redundant backup, effective information transmission methods, and rich content retrieval methods.

The question to answer in this article is how to use emails to improve our work efficiency. The following describes how to use emails to write and manage emails.

Ii. Email writing

First, let's look at two scenarios:

Scenario 1:

The following two emails are from Scott berkun's making things happen: Mastering projectmanagement. One of them is well written and the other is not well written. This is the first one:

Over the past four weeks, many of us want to know when the re-designed program code check-in process can be completed. I know that we spent a long time discussing it in the lobby and in the conference room, trying to find the right way to make a decision, but we didn't understand the substantive design of the new process. It is not easy for me to select committee members. Many people know that it takes more time than expected. I am sorry for this, but these are still happening.
So, first of all, I want to let you know some of the key points of the new proposal, so that no one misses our weekly discussion, or has not talked to me over the past two weeks:
1. The check-in program is very important. They decide what we are building.
2. Everyone has opinions. We have all heard of Randy and Bob's respective detailed descriptions to explain why they think the current system is so bad.
3. There is no simple answer. Most of the modifications we have discussed have disadvantages. So when we reach a final conclusion, there will be some rough points in the transition period and it may continue.
After drawing these conclusions, I want you to know that I will send you a modified proposal for the rest of this week. Please note that the next email I sent should be sent soon.

This is the second one:

The final proposal of the new check-in procedure process has been submitted on the website: http: // intman/proc/checkin /.
This is a controversial issue. I have discussed this proposal one by one with most people on the team and integrated the feedback from everyone. If it does not include yours, and you have a strong opinion, please send it to me as soon as possible.
Note: This is the second public statement about these upcoming changes. At present, there are very few opportunities for modification, and it will be smaller in the future. Please take action now, otherwise you will remain silent.
Five o'clock P.M. on Friday is the deadline for me to contact the above proposal for feedback. Before that, I will consider and respond to any questions or comments (study with appropriate persons); otherwise, this will happen and take effect next week.

Comparing the two emails, we can easily conclude that the second one is well written. What is the problem with the first email? I personally think that the first email seems to be well written, but in fact there are a lot of distracting and difficult to grasp the key content of the email, and some of the descriptions are ambiguous. On the other hand, all the descriptions in the second mail are action-oriented, so that the recipient can understand what to do and when to do it. In this way, the mail value will be reflected, the coordination and communication through this email also virtually improves everyone's work efficiency.

Scenario 2:

Scenario 2 consists of three emails, which are the first one sent by the sender to the customer:

According to the schedule of shipping, the boards shocould have been encoded ed. Do you get them?
As agreed before, boards will be tested and paid within 20 days after being ed.
Well, after ready, nearly 30 days, they are only picked up and shipped.
Therefore, please kindly arrange test and the balance Payment ASAP.

This is the second one. The customer replies to the sender:

Wehave not yet lost ed the shipment. Please be aware that yesterday, Monday wasbank holiday in hugary. I will check with ups today, and will let you know.

After receiving a reply from the customer, the sender gives feedback on the reply:

Descrithanks for your letter.
I just asked forwarder and learned that boards are still in importing customs clearance.
Hope you receive them early.
After partition tion, please kindly help arrange test as early .:-))
Too thanks!

Through the loop of the above three emails, do you see the problem? I personally think the biggest problem is that the sender does not look at the problem from the perspective of the other party. If he speaks out, he only cares about his own interests, regardless of the other party's difficulties. Email is a relatively formal communication method, representing the relationship of interests. If the attitude and wording make the recipient feel uncomfortable, different people may have different responses, in extreme cases, it will bring unnecessary troubles to yourself and your team and affect the communication effect.

Through the above analysis, we realized that good and bad emails sometimes lead to very different communication results. These results greatly affect the efficiency of individuals and teams around them. The following describes how to write an email and how to write it:

1. there is a "curve principle" in the industry about the title of the mail, in which curve is curiosity (curiosity), urgency (urgency), relevancy (correlation), value (value) and emotion (Appeal) the combination of the first letters of the five English words. The curve principle assumes that a good mail title should meet at least two of the above five points. Although the principle is proposed as a marketing master, I personally think that this principle is still instructive in writing emails at ordinary times. Generally, relevance, value type, and urgency can be used as the main reference.

Another element of the title is "style". The effects of the same content are often different through different title styles. Commonly used title styles in personal summaries include:

• The multi-segment title displays the subject to be expressed in an email by using the segment description in the title. Example:

Xx management mobile edition system-xx hospital product release Update-UAT, No. 01

The title above is used for external service release, indicating that on February 28, the xx management mobile edition System of XX hospital was released and updated. The target environment and release sequence numbers are UAT and No. 01, respectively, the email recipient can master the main points of the entire task from the title, and can also search based on multiple keywords in subsequent mail management. Multi-segment headers are the most commonly used title styles and have the best effect.

• Body topic title. The title directly displays the subject of the email. Example:

XX hospital pre-sales support

• Event-driven title: determines the mail title through events and activities, with strong context information. Example:

Please submit the training PPT before next Monday ()

Generally, the event-driven title is clearly reflected in the content, time, and owner of the event. It is often used within the team and used with caution for external communication.

• Stream program title, which is used for process operation and process record. Generally, it provides data basis for subsequent review. Example:

MCS-PKU update (1) @ 2014-03-14

The title for internal testing by the R & D team, said on this day, the MCS-PKU had the first service update needed to test follow-up.

2. Recipient

For recipients, three points are emphasized:

• The recipient is sometimes more important than the email itself: Sometimes the email itself has no available content, but different recipients will make important things unimportant, and also make unimportant things important, when writing a recipient, make sure that the appropriate recipient is found. Also, when you accept emails, please take a look at the recipient list immediately.
• Concept of stakeholder: Make sure that the recipient of the email meets the definition of stakeholder. Only satisfied is my business and the people associated with this business are my stakeholders.
• Distinguish between contact persons and contact groups: a Contact Group is a common form of mail recipient organization, but a Contact Group is a typical misuse of mail that is "unnecessary recipients, some jobs will be added to many contact groups. If he receives dozens of emails that have nothing to do with himself, emails that really require him to take action may be missed, leading to communication problems.

The above three points are largely related to communication management models and strategies. For details, refer to my other blog on communication: communication Management-effective transmission and maintenance of information.

With the above principles, we can send emails to people you want to take actions and CC them to people you want to know something or occasionally give suggestions.
3. Attachment

The attachment is divided into two scenarios: Internal and External. Note the following when using the attachment for external communication:

• Drag the attachment as soon as the email is drafted
• Package files such as EXE, DLL, and MSI
• Try not to transmit large attachments (> 10 MB)
• Use a common file format. Do not use a format similar to RAR.
• Name the attachment
• The attachment usage should be clearly indicated in the mail body
• Distinguish content suitable for email body and attachment

Attachments are not recommended for internal communication. It is usually preferred to use SVN, OneNote, and other methods to transfer information in PULL mode.
4. Text

The body contains the following key points:

• The goal is to achieve the goal. "Who are you? What do you want ?"
• Put the most important thing in the first paragraph, especially the first three sentences.
• If you want the other party to take actions in multiple places, highlight them.
• The supplementary and descriptive text will be explained later.

Basic principles for expressing a topic:

• Thinking from your own standpoint and speaking from the standpoint of the other party
• Strong stance and moderate attitude

The following is a good example of the text topic:

1. The xxx hospital needs to test run the xxx system. Some data needs to be read from the mobile nursing system. You need to arrange the personnel to cooperate and request that the interface program be provided before March 31, May 14. If the program cannot be provided in time, please also send a copy to XXX when sending an email, which is the sale of this system.
2. contact person for mobile doctor's ward round System Development: XXX contact information: XXX
3. the attachment is the "XXX standard interface solution". Please check it.

Avoid semantic misunderstanding in the mail body and use as few as possible. For example, the following is a negative example:

• "This makesHeProcess"
• "ThisDLL placed inThatDirectory"

In the mail, you need to give the recipient a positive feedback. If the agreed time cannot be used to give a reply, the first time you reply to the email, it indicates that the email is being processed, but it will take some time, for example:

Today, there are many things during the day. Later, I will provide deployment instructions and software for the xxx version, and ask the on-site personnel to perform the pre-deployment work in a timely manner.

Note the following when organizing the body logic:

• Concise, not too divergent
• Use automatic numbers whenever possible
• Put important content in front and auxiliary content in the back
• Use short chapters and short sentences. Disconnect long sentences and long paragraphs
• Empty lines between paragraphs

At the same time, I personally think that using inline reply is the best practice in some scenarios. Inline reply refers to the one-by-one reply to user information, which is usually used in a large number of Q & A Reply scenarios:

• Reply one by one in the original email
• Use different fonts and colors
• You 'd better add your own name to the prefix.
• The beginning of the sentence indicates attitude. For example, accept, unimplemented, TBD, OK, or no
• The body of the email must indicate that the inline mode is used for replies.

The following is an example of an inline reply that I have used in my work:

1. How is the structure for the MDs? Please update the system design for discussion.
1.1. auto update is needed for the MDS.
[Tianmin]Yes, it will be supported ded.
1.2. mcs_sys_log is needed for recording the ah_error, system error, such as Wi-Fi failure
[Tianmin]Yes, it will be supported ded.
1.3. Separated server log between MDS/MCS/any new clients. if it cannot be separated, please make you can diagnostic the problem be system.
[Tianmin]Yes, we will separate them by using different prefix, for example, all the logs like mds_xxx can be used for checking the issues raised by MDS.
1.4. Please propose, shell we use the MCS dB or create the new database.
[Tianmin]From your system design, we think using the MCS dB is OK
1.5. Please propose if any new system is needed, we shocould create individual ear or using the same ear with MDS?
[Tianmin]If we will have other small systems like MDS deployed in the future shown in your system design, we also suggest to create individual ear, although it will cost extra time for development and maintenance.

The following example uses Outlook 2010 as an example to describe how to annotate inline replies:

5. Confirm

After writing the email, confirm before pressing "send:

• Check title, recipient, and CC
• Read it all at once to avoid mistakes or unstated opinions.
• Pay attention to the key words and confirm "person name, time, location, whether or not, no ".
• Check whether the attachment is missing

3. Mail management usually involves data archiving, Content Retrieval, record maintenance, and time management. These processes are closely related to the daily work efficiency. Some of the following operations and tool features use outlook as the client software, and other tools such as Foxmail are for reference.
1. the mail template personally thinks that the mail mode is an effective practice to improve the efficiency of individuals and teams. It can be used throughout the whole team management process. For example, the following is the uniform leave report email template used by our team:

Leave Time: 2014/XX one day
Reason for leave: xxxx
Work handover: xxxx/no need to hand over
Contact information: Mobile Phone xxxxxxx, during which there is/no network, Mobile Phone Mail is available

2. Grouping can be used to distinguish between "mandatory" and "not easy to see" emails; Distinguish between special stakeholders and ordinary people; Distinguish between emails of different projects and products where you are located. In outlook, you can set the group based on the sender, subject containing keywords, and recipients, and select "whether to display desktop prompts" Based on the importance ".
3. You can use outlook to manage the mail view, such as using the reading layout, column sorting, and custom view. The following is an example:

4. You can use task tags and category groups to manage to-do items or important items, as shown in the example in Outlook:

5. Calendar

Calendar is a core function of mail management and plays an important role in personal time management and team collaboration. Daily Work usually involves:

• Meeting invitation: You can specify the time, place, and number of participants at the meeting invitation. If the recipient accepts the request, it can be proposed if it wants to change the time. If the invitee wants to change the time, it will send an update.
• Self-task and time management: through the management of meetings and events in the calendar, individuals can clearly define their own task arrangements to improve the efficiency of time management, such as the following effects in Outlook:

 
6. Never delete your emails in the archive, unless emails generated by systems such as redmine are automatically generated. If there are too many emails, We need to archive them. Archive can retain the organizational structure of the original mail folder, which can be automatically archived or manually triggered. For more information about archive settings in outlook, see:

Iv. Summary most of the basic operations on emails are simple and intuitive, but this will also lead to individual practices in the team and lack a unified practice model at the team level. According to the characteristics of team communication management, organizing and formulating the mail use practices recognized by team members is the original intention of this article, hoping to bring you some ideas and touch.

Tools-series emails-how tools change your productivity