Anvil Graphics Blog

I stay busy, I am pretty sure of it. And I whack line after line off ‘to do’ lists both here in the office and at home. And things get done, I can point to plenty of projects and errands and meetings and phone calls and emails and family time and involvement at church. I don’t watch much TV, perhaps 8 to 10 hours per week (and virtually no sports). We don’t have any of the premium cable channels, so half of what I watch is in Spanish. I don’t game online or with the Playstation. I don’t Facebook or MySpace or YouTube. I do have a Linkedin account, but it took me 3 months to fill in the profile and make my first contact. I don’t spend much time online at forums or surfing the internet. Unfortunately, I don’t volunteer much time at all in the community or at a school or in a nursing home or with Boy Scouts. I don’t spend time online tracking my meager investments or planning my next brilliant financial move.

I don’t remember my parents being so busy. I remember them in the living room having long conversations about work, night after night. I remember long Saturdays doing some house work and then settling in for a BBQ on the patio. I think they paid their few bills in a couple hours on a Sunday afternoon. My parents worked hard full-time, but in their off hours they were really off, and appeared (at least to a child) to have hours and hours of leisure time.

We seem to spend 3 or 4 hours a week inputting every receipt into Quickbooks, researching mistakes by the water company, following up on overcharges at the bank, reconciling multiple accounts, talking to a rep at Verizon about the PureLuv.com charge that showed up on our cellphone bill, finding out why Intuit started charging $39 every month after a one-time tech support call. And so it goes.

Our modern world sucks the time and life out of all of us. We were supposed to be empowered by technology, when the reality is that it is just another thing on a never ending to do list. I have “list anxiety”, that nagging feeling that there is always another thing that needs to be checked off – another project to complete.

So I don’t think I am a procrastinator, I try hard to get the things done which need done. I know I am not alone, on this planet we are the busiest nation of people going nowhere — our faces turned down to our iPhones, checking voice mail for the tenth time today.

Pretty much every day I get emails from otherwise highly qualified professional people who are poorly identified in their email communication. Here is what I mean.

There is a message in my inbox right now from a great sales lady who works for a really good printing company. She is identified as Terry Knox (not her real name) and the subject is “Did you know….”. I sort through a lot of email each day, and I did not immediately recognize this salesperson and the subject line is less than enlightening. This message was one click away from the trash heap.

In the inbox of email there are two things which identify you and the purpose of your message; the SENDER (or NAME) and the SUBJECT. It is really important that you take full advantage of both of these data fields so that your recipient knows who you are and what you want.

Take the time and go into your account settings and adjust your name. If you are writing email representing a business, then use the business name like “Anvil Graphics”, or if part of a larger organization perhaps combine your name with that of the company like “Bob at Microsoft”. Avoid only your personal name, and for goodness sake don’t use only your first name without identifying the business you represent. When you enter your identity in the email account, don’t use quotation marks. When your message arrives I want to know who you are and where your from (so does everyone else).

Take the time to write a meaningful subject line. Avoid phrases like, “Whadaya think???” or “Call me” or “Proposal”. In a very short phrase try to capture what your communication is about – like a thesis statement, make it specific. So instead of ‘Call me’, you might write, “Need to change Friday’s meeting time”. This is much more helpful when your recipient is reviewing their inbox and trying to figure out what action to take (and how long it will take) for each message.

Specific subjects also really help when organizing email. Some of us file away your email messages for future reference, so we like a quick topic overview. We use Thunderbird to manage email partly because it allows for folder and sub-folders. We file your messages away based on the project, so we can quickly find the information in the future. A clear subject helps us do that much quicker, without having to review the message again.

One final note, when possible, try to limit your email to one topic, that way the message can be filed away easily into one folder (one subject line / one topic / one folder). I admit this takes extra time and effort, but when you get a reply, you actually know the moment you see the message in the inbox what the reply is about – all because you took the time to write a good subject line.