8 Steps to Save Weeks of Your Team's Time

Looking to cut costs and amp up your team’s productivity? Learn to write better emails.

Stick with me here. There is a connection, one that can deliver a huge benefit for your organization. According to Forbes, most office workers receive about 200 emails each day, which take about two-and-a-half hours to read and reply to. In the US, this translates to roughly 16 work weeks per year! Per person!

Eager to get some of that time back for your team?

While email will always require a chunk of your team’s schedule, you can slash that time to a fraction of what email costs you now. Here's how:

1. Get crystal clear on the why, first. Why are you writing this? Don’t settle for, “because I have to.” What will change after your email gets read? Your readers’ actions? Their opinion of your work? The quality of theirs? If the answer is “nothing,” you probably don’t need to send the email at all. Understanding the desired result up front makes getting it much more likely.

2. Don’t make them wait for the reveal. This isn’t a murder mystery or a home makeover show. Start your email with your main point. Have mercy on your reader, who is diligently working through the other 199 messages he got that day and, in his spare time, getting actual work done. If you need to give him some context first, fine, but limit yourself to a few lines. No one wants to wait until the end of your email to find out the key takeaway. And the clearer you are on your main point, the less time you’ll spend writing supporting details you don’t need.

3. Put yourself in their place. Imagine your reader. What would she need to know to understand and agree with your point?
   
   WARNING! This is not EVERYTHING you know about it. Restrict yourself to what the reader needs, given her likely reaction to and questions about the content. You’ll save her reading time AND your writing and editing time.
   
   WARNING #2! Your reader is not in your head, so she doesn’t know what project, action item, or data you’re talking about until you tell her. If there’s any chance your reader won’t understand your content, you need to give her more information. This takes less time than responding to a bunch of clarifying questions after the fact.
   

4. Don’t shy away from the action. If you’re asking your reader to do something, don’t be coy. Use names, dates and specific expectations. Most people appreciate the clarity. If I have a job to do, I want to know exactly what it is and how to prioritize it. Ask a vague question, get a vague answer. Make a vague request…well, you get it.

5. Headline it. Most writers skip the subject line or write something useless, like “follow-up.” But here’s the thing. A subject line that gets to the heart of your email grabs your reader’s attention AND makes the job of reading it easier. It sets up your reader’s brain to process the details that follow. By the way, writing a specific subject line also helps you to get clear on your main point (see number 2, above).

6. Don’t send it yet! We all know that proofreading is a good idea. So is making sense and not offending your reader. Read your writing out loud (quietly, just so you can hear) uncovers all sorts of issues that need fixing – missing info, verbosity, typos, unintentional ranting about your boss. This does not need to take more than a minute or two.

7. Don’t send it yet, part two—be nice. If your teammate dropped the ball, email is not the place to hash out the issue. If you need to vent, find someone other than your keyboard to tell it to. Angry emails never speed the team to a meaningful result and often cause problems that cost even more time.

8. Think twice about replying to all. One last check—does everyone on your distribution list need to be there? Will something go wrong if that person doesn’t read it? If not, do everyone a favor and remove them from the list! If you don’t believe me, look at your inbox for the “reply-all” emails you never read.

Remember what’s at stake—roughly 30% of your working hours. Follow these tips and you could free up a month or more per teammate, per year.

Imagine what you could do with that.