Send us a Text Message.
In this episode, I discuss two areas we can easily become overloaded and consumed with – email and texting. I share real-world examples of miscommunication and several ways to fix them.
If work emails are consuming most of your time then listen to this episode as we cover effectively creating and responding to emails, my view on handling attachments, and a better way to forward emails.
Are you productive or just busy?
Recover some of your time, work smarter not harder.
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Chapters
[00:37] Are you Productive or Busy?
[01:45] Work email “Volleying”
[02:59] Text fail example
[04:18] Less is more
[05:35] Listener challenge
[07:25] My email and The Red Pen
[09:49] Solving my text fail
[11:27] Clean email creation
[14:44] KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid
[17:38] Rethinking email attachments
[18:43] Don’t forward confusion
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welcome to career growth made easy with Craig. And so I'm your host overloaded. That's today's podcast theme. Be honest when you heard that, Did you think man that describes me or that described my work life Well, you're not alone in today's world were asked to do more, do more with less. That's less time less. Resource is that means less money, people and materials. The world is fast paced for sure, and people don't like to wait. I challenge you, though, when you thought about overloaded and how it made you feel, Are you productive or maybe just plain busy? If you've ever had an exhausting day and you just couldn't wait for the end of the day to come, said you could finish up what you're doing and then you run into somebody and they said, Hey, how'd it go today? What did you accomplish? And then, after a long, deep pause, you answer them honestly, I don't know, I warn you, you might have been busy. Today's episode focuses on our two largest forms of typewritten communication. That's email and text. We're going to explore the challenges we face with both and talk about possible ways for improving, becoming more efficient and, frankly, being more productive. If that sounds good, stick with us. Speaking of improvements, don't forget the show notes at the end, because we have a freebie in there about resume tune up tips. Our guide walks you through Today's most common resume mistakes. How to fix them and there's even some bonus material inside. Let's go ahead and jump right in and talk about work e mails. If you have ever needed some info or maybe just wanted to get a few questions answered and thought and emails the way to go, I'll fire something off quick and get a quick response. But then you find their first reply just wasn't cutting it. Then what followed was a series of email volleys back and forth, kind of like a pro tennis match, all in an effort to get the original information you needed or get your original questions answered. I'll bet some of you out there can relate. Worse yet, has anybody out there ever had an email valley campaign go beyond one day email? Volleying takes a lot of time and energy, and it takes away from our everyday productivity. It stops us and we have to read, end or reply to another email. We become totally distracted from whatever it is we're working on. And if you think about the bigger picture, that means were at least two times less efficient. Because not only are we robbing our time and productivity, but the other person on the end of the email that's responding and reading our e mails, too, let's switch to texting. I'm going to share with you a real world example of the situation I faced with a local church religious director. I needed some information about an upcoming show that we were doing, and I thought, Hey, attacks to be the fastest way to go to get that info. I mean, who doesn't have their phone on them? 24 7 right? I carefully crafted my texts and send it off. I was in luck because I nearly instantly got a response. So I'm thinking, Man, this person's really on top of their game. The problem was, I opened it up and it was a one liner. Sure, you're welcome. I had to put my detective hat on for sure. I had to re read my initial text I broke it down into five small parts for you guys. Just explain what I was seeing. The greeting, the note of appreciation for working with her in the past, the info leading up to my questions and then the closing. If you think about her response, sure, you're welcome. I don't think it applied to my greeting, and I'm pretty sure it did not apply to the closing because if it had, the questions were right before that. And I'm sure she would have answered those. That leaves two other sections, my appreciation note and the info. To be honest with you, I got my questions answered elsewhere. Thankfully, there is a fix, and I call it less is more and I'm talking about content now. Before we dig into that, I want to address something. There are so many personality types, traits and styles out there. All these affect how we communicate. This episode, though, is not about any of that. This episode is on Lee to focus on less is more and talking about content. If anybody out there is interested in talking about personality types, traits, styles, anything related to personality, drop us a note at info at Craig and sell dot com. And if there's enough interest, we'll see if we can work it into a future episode. A word of warning as I've seen this time and time again with my coaching clients. Usually when we're working towards improvement, it requires change and you might feel some resistance. Or maybe even second guessing yourself when we're getting ready to talk about what comes up next and that's okay. You see, the human brain is naturally wired that way. It wants to stay with what it knows what it remembers. So while it's good to change things up, trying new ideas expand and grow. Just know that you might feel some resistance, and that that's normal before he apply less is more. I offer you a little challenge, a little homework. If you've ever had those veiling emails, here's what I'd like you to do. Go back Number one and locate a few of those e mails. Number to count the number of replies that were involved and number three. If you have time, go back and read the full conversation from the very beginning. If you want to go ahead and pause this episode and come back to us. That's cool. Otherwise we're moving ahead. If you did the challenge, I'll bet that you are amazed at how much time and effort it took just to review all that information. And I'll bet you I can guess some of your outcomes notice. I didn't say some of your answers. Why did I do that? And use the word outcome? Because I'll bet that I can describe at least some of what your email Valley campaign looked like with their first reply. Maybe it only answered part of your question. It gave some info on the topic you needed, Or maybe like my text example. You didn't receive any valuable information at all. You're second in additional follow up Valley emails slowly narrow down the focus and pinpointed what the info was that you needed. You are clarifying your request. Eventually your questions got answered. You gave up. As the number of replies seem to approach infinity, you did the unthinkable and called the person directly or like me. You went elsewhere for your info. Hopefully I got you thinking a little bit out there before you right into the show and tell me Hey, Craig. There's a significant difference between e mails and texts. I get it. I know with our less is more strategy, specifically focusing on content. It's really important that we clearly communicate. I have a final example today that, frankly was very painful for me to go through. But it also provided an incredible learning experience, and I'm willing to relive it with you in hopes that they'll be some benefit. Years ago, I asked a coworker to peer check one of my e mails for grammar and clarity before he sent it out to a group of more than two dozen and then included some in mid and upper management. I think it was about a page and 1/2 and three large paragraphs. You should know. I spent a lot of time double, and I think even triple checking the work to make sure it was clear, well organized and well written. I was pretty sure it was gonna pass the test with flying colors. My co worker with printed hardcopy in hand and red pen went toe work. I had to hold my emotions back because the slaughter was on from my very first paragraph sentence by sentence. They got redlined. What came out of the ashes was a single sentence on Lee. One sentence from my entire first paragraph that had survived. Well, I twisted angrily in my chair as he went on to paragraphs two and three when the bloodshed was over. Yep. You guessed it Onley. One sentence from each paragraph survived Three paragraphs, one and 1/2 page is now three sentences with a few deep breaths. I calmly tried to ask that we walk through this example so he could explain what just happened. Even if my three paragraphs were written clearly and with proper grammar, I found out they were unnecessary. Sure, I had the info well structured and organized. However, there was only one point per paragraph and ultimately this could be conveyed in one sentence each. You see this particular coworker happen to be ex military, and in one position that he served, he was administrative assistant to a general. I believe the messages to the general had to be conveyed in the shortest for impossible. And this is where his messaging capabilities came in handy. I combined what he taught me along with my personal, passionate study for self improvement and high performance growth, along with hanging that redlined email and my computer monitor for the next year, plus help me focus on the concept of less is more going back to my text message story. We're going to dig a little bit deeper. I purposely explained to you the problem that I had and specifically detailed out that there were five parts to my text in the middle or the body of the text. I have a thank you message to the lady explaining to her that I appreciated working with her before I had an introduction into what I was going to talk about and ask a question or questions about fall by the question or questions themselves. She probably only read the first part of the text and decided to answer that her attention was then shifted elsewhere. What could I have done just given the name and the question I had and thank you? Regardless, she got to the thank you or not, she would have least seeing my question. Since that time, I've had the opportunity to work with that particular church director again, and I have to tell you, if you've ever seen one of those old Western movies where the quick gun draw happens. That's how quick she is with her cell phone. The text come in, the notifications air up, the cell phone is out and the fingers are going at it quickly. The text is sent and it phone goes back on her holster, so to speak. I can only think back to when I had texted her and how she reacted when she received my message. I'm not faulting her in any way. And I'm not judging anybody that text quickly or mrs some of the information in a text. I think we just have to learn that we can do less is more. And in the instance of asking a question, get straight to it and you're more likely to get a response regarding my earlier email example where it was slaughtered with the red pen. Three paragraphs at one and 1/2 pages total, turning into three lonely sentences. We're gonna explore that a little bit more in detail, and hopefully this will provide some value to you out there that maybe you can look at your current e mails and find a way to clean them up and make them more efficient. I know though this will help, especially if you're suffering from the email volleying that I talked about earlier, where you can't seem to get a clear response to a question or clear information on your first request, and it takes several generations. What I realized I had done in my first paragraph, for example, was I was introducing my email, which is not always a bad thing, but I went into too much explanation. I explained I was going to be doing something in the future and to be on the lookout for that say, ah, calendar invite for a meeting that wasn't necessary because I should have just gone ahead and filed the calendar invite instead of talked about it so I could introduce the email with one sentence. In the second paragraph, I talk about the content of the E mail, maybe one or two sentences. I didn't have to go into explanations or expand on anything. Just hit the cold, hard facts in the third sentence, which was Excuse me, third paragraph, which was my closing paragraph. I said things like, and if anybody else needs this email, I didn't mean to leave them off. So please go ahead and ford it to others. And if anybody needs any information or additional information, please send a reply back. Those things simply aren't necessary, even though we want to be nice about it. And cordial people are gonna go ahead and ford the email toe others out there regardless, if you give them quote, quote permission or not, or remind them to do so. And if somebody else really, truly needs information from you, assuming they even got to your third paragraph in my case on the second page, they're going to reply to you Call you hunt you down to get that information so you don't always have to say that now. Maybe if you're communicating to a customer, it's polite to do something like that. But at least for internal emails between colleagues or between management staff, get to the point Quickly. Write your email number one. Don't send it Number two. Take a few pauses. Re read the email and ask yourself, What does this email truly say? What is the point? I'm trying to get across? If you at were intending it to be a question and answer email. Make sure your questions air clear. Some of the tricks that you can do are too. Number your questions or two. Bullet them. That way, if you introduce the email with Hi there I have a few questions on Project X. Please see below. Now you've explained it. If not and you put them into a paragraph, they get buried sometimes just like in my text. Example. On Lee, the top part of it was red. I think in today's world we simply don't have enough time to read all the information provided to us because we're getting bombarded. And it's just best to be short and simple and to the point, so talking about simple there's actually an acronym out there that might help you. It's called Kiss K. I S s and it stands for Keep it simple. Stupid. No, I'm not calling you the listener or your intended recipient of your text or email. Stupid. It's just a old phrase an old adage out there and that point is just remember to keep things simple regarding e mails. What I would suggest you do is just type out what's on your mind. Get it out on paper, get it out onto the computer screen first. It's a lot harder to create content than it is to edit it, that's for sure. So if you've ever helped somebody, whether it's a family member or friend or work colleague, you notice it's a lot easier to give feedback and edit than it is to sit there and brainstorm together. After you've done that, go back and re read what you've written. Ask yourself a couple questions. Perhaps these or similar ones. Does it make any sense? Does it convey my point? If I'm asking something of someone? Is my message clean and clear and am I doing it up front? So is not to lose their attention if you pass on all these above. Part's great. Now go back and run your less is more filter if the text you put down isn't necessary deleted. If you feel funny or uncomfortable when you're deleting it, what you could do instead and I used to do this so it might help you is copy it or rather cut it and paste it at the bottom of your email. That way you still have it, and you can see what you removed later. Once the email is kiss and less is more compliant, go ahead and re read it. If it flows, you might be done. And then for fun. If you cut out that text and you placed it at the bottom of her email, go read that. It's probably just a bunch of jumbled phrases or sentences. But you'll see all those types of words and statements you made weren't necessary to get the point across. They were simply waste. You just created a good filter to get rid of the extra junk that people don't need to know and might even ignore. In some cases. One other thing we need to talk about regarding e mails is something critical. The subject line. You need to make the subject line short and sweet. If it's not clear your email could be ignored, your subject line entices the reader toe. Open the email without a good subject line, you could be sunk regardless of what type of practices you follow to improve the body. The content of your email Let's quickly talk about email attachments. To be or not to be, I would suggest reducing the number of attachments, injure e mails or, if possible, avoiding them altogether unless absolutely necessary. What you could do is you could refer to the key parts in an attachment and use a screen capture tool or a filter. Such a snag it or green shot to copy and paste that critical information from an attachment into the body of your email that might make it more appealing to the eye and entice the reader to actually read the content. Also using some type of screenshot. Ah, Editor Tool. I highly recommend that you highlight the text within the article that you're pasting in, circle it or draw a big arrow to it so that they understand what the focus is. Where then, just paste an image in and have the reader have to read into your email to figure it out. Now we haven't talked about email fording, but if you decide at work that you're going to Ford and email, you need to determine what parts, if any, you're going to Ford along number one. Don't forge anything if you don't understand it, or if it's confusing to you, seek clarification first. So that way you don't Ford confusion to others because it wasn't your original email to start with and you're just going to be asked questions or your forward might even be ignored if it's too confusing number too many times. You can take out a lot of the bottom of the forwards from prior e mails because they don't add value. Or there could be some potential email volleying like we talked about earlier, and there's just no value in it. If you absolutely want to ford something along, think about a sous inked way. A kiss way. Using less is more to convey that forward. Maybe using bullets, just a few sentences, maybe number out the points, don't have the readers you're forwarding to have to scroll down and read pages and pages of information. It won't be clear to them. And if you went through and read it, you know how much effort it takes just to catch up to the story. So how could you cleanly and clearly summarize it to make fording something much easier? Plus, like a said, delete all that content. If you're going to summarize it and just put the key parts in your message to the people you're sending to. I hope that helps you rethink how you might work on e mails and send them, especially in business environments. Well, thanks for sticking in there. It's time to wrap up this episode with our focus on email and texting. I hope between the various discussions and examples, you are able to glean some valuable information, maybe tools, tips, tricks, what have you and that they'll benefit you even in a small way, because the goal of this program is to help you improve, help you become more efficient, and maybe work your way to that next step in your job or career approach potentially to a promotion or to a higher pay raise. If you found this information useful, please let us know we would love to hear your feedback. You can send it to info at Craig and sell dot com. Don't forget to share this episode with family, friends or co workers. You never know who is struggling out there and just some little bit of advice. They here might just change the way they're doing things and improve their situation. If you haven't subscribed yourself so you stay in touch with us, will occasionally send out some e mails with some special bonus content, and we'd hate for you to miss that. We help you turn problems into potential and issues and opportunities. This has been Craig, and so we'll see you next time piece.
