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"This post originally appeared on the 15Five blog.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nEmail is a huge time and efficiency suck. It\u2019s a perpetuating cycle of call and response, a vortex of distraction and a black hole for productivity. But there is a way out\u2026\r\n\r\nIn the movie\u00A0Every Day\u2019s a Holiday,\u00A0Mae West famously remarked, \u201CLet\u2019s get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini.\u201D That\u2019s how I feel about email. The problem is that it\u2019s not a holiday. It\u2019s Monday morning and I won\u2019t have my first martini until lunch.\r\n\r\nOkay, even if you\u2019re not trading emailing for martinis during the day, who is guilty of hopping right back into their inboxes\u00A0after work? Checking your email on your smartphone en route to dinner?\u00A0Sound familiar? Just stop. The benefits are clear. Communicating smarter saves time, increases efficiency, and makes work more enjoyable for everyone.\r\nIt all starts with process\r\nEmail is just one of the tools at our disposal. Organizations can tailor communication based on different needs by using the myriad technologies available. For example, no one is going to read your 4,000 word email, no matter how pretty your embedded charts look.\r\n\r\nInstead, create a wiki or a white paper to disseminate important information that will be repeatedly accessed by your team. Then use Dropbox or Google Drive to make it available for future reference.\r\n\r\nLikewise, high-level conversations about team progress, performance, and satisfaction should not be circulated via email. That method is not just annoying and frustrating, it taxes the resources of the entire company. Important stuff inevitably falls through cracks. There is a need to structure a weekly process for stakeholders to communicate these essential focal points.\r\n\r\nI know this because of the overwhelming response to an internal question from our early days. (Yes, we at\u00A015Five\u00A0use our own reporting system every week.) We were asked for \u201Cone suggestion to improve your role, team, or the organization.\u201D Almost every answer involved streamlining how we communicate.\r\n\r\nThe consensus: Keep the most important conversations out of email. Period. Otherwise, you have to juggle multiple team members, all of whom will respond at different times. And if an important response actually does surface, it will be lost in a sea of potentially pointless drivel. Try getting your important tasks completed when ten different people are blowing up your inbox all day long.\r\nLoop me out, damnit!\r\nHave you ever taken a few days off work only to return to hundreds of emails in your inbox? After filtering out the crap and repeatedly asking, &amp;quot;Why am I cc\u2019d on this?&amp;quot;, you are left with a mere handful of useful and important conversations.\r\n\r\nIncrease efficiency by creating a hierarchy of people who will own certain tasks while others report directly to them. The people who are working together at one level can communicate among themselves, and then pass the information up as needed. You can schedule a quick meeting to define the detailed structure and tailor the process to your team\u2019s specific needs.\r\nPut your email where your mouth is\r\nWhen used wisely, verbal communication can be far more efficient:\r\n\r\n1. Schedule a one-on-one. Anticipate the need for a longer conversation based on how individual members of your team process things. Several short meetings in the conference room can save the team from hours of drowning in group threads.\r\n\r\n2. Gather your key players. Are you ideating and iterating? While reading 312 emails from a 12-member team sounds like a really valuable use of your time, it is far better to meet and instantly hash-out suggestions and responses. If your team is spread out or works remotely, meetings can have a secondary benefit of building connections and overall employee satisfaction.\r\n\r\n3. Face Time. Our entire team checks in for 15 minutes every morning via Google Hangout. Two or three members of the team will stay on after the rest of the group logs off. Those few minutes of face-to-face contact make the rest of the day flow so much better.\r\n\r\n4. Get on a call. I usually reserve emailing for situations where I can clearly state a need to a consultant or team-member, and I don\u2019t anticipate a response other than \u201CGot it\u201D or \u201CI\u2019ll have that for you by EOD.\u201D\r\n\r\nOnce my list of things to discuss hits three or more, I change strategies and resolve the issue with a five-minute call. Sure, there is sometimes resistance. The person on the line is wondering why I just called rather than emailing them first to schedule the call. I explain that five minutes right now will save an hour of typing back and forth throughout the day.\r\n\r\nEmail can be a valuable tool when we take the time to do it properly. So, before furiously tapping your fingers and hitting send, take three minutes to review. Does it make sense? Does the recipient have enough information to proceed? Can I remove any recipients?\r\n\r\nIf the email is a reply, make sure you have adequately responded to the original questions, because the alternative is getting stuck in an endless wormhole of confused responses and nervous requests for more information.\r\n\r\nHow do you keep the communication channels flowing smoothly? Tell us in the comments section below."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2013/12/20/stop-emailing-get-inbox-back-work/>