Comments on: Nine Ways to Devastate Productivity

By: Mark Shead

Mark Shead — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 02:31:01 +0000

@Ruth – I don’t like the idea of “NFI” or anything that tries to stuff all of the information into the subject of an email. Here is why:

1. It causes people to write longer subject lines. Depending on how your email program is configured you may not be able to see it anyway.

2. Some email programs may only search the body of a message so if you are looking for it later, you might have a harder time finding it.

3. The shortened format encourages people to use abbreviations and SMS style shorthand. This can lead to misunderstandings. Even if the meaning is clear, it usually reflects poorly on the person writing it.

4. Spam filters are trained to recognize normal emails. If you start sending messages with empty bodies, there may be a higher chance of your messages getting flagged as spam because they don’t look normal to the filters.

By: Ruth

Ruth — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:58:48 +0000

I love the idea of the (NFI) no further information idea of putting everything into the header (if it’s brief info that’s being transmitted) so that the body of the msg can be left blank, and headers can be quickly scanned. But there should be a commonly accepted acronym that EVERYONE knows at the beginning of the header, so that no one misses information added in the body of the email.

(I don’t think it’s NFI…but couldn’t remember the right acronym)

By: Anca

Anca — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:55:37 +0000

Very nice post good idea in writing something about devastating productivity, while other are working hard to increasing it. Great post

By: Catherine Cantieri, Sorted

Catherine Cantieri, Sorted — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 23:37:10 +0000

Ah, man, this post is giving me flashbacks to a guy I used to work with who would wander through the halls of the building and stop in people’s offices to chat with them. But it was never a quick chat; the minimum time bite was 30 minutes. And it would always be prefaced by him sort of … *lingering* in the doorway. You could never bring yourself to say “Dude! Working here! Don’t have time!” — well, I never could. But I wish I had sometimes.

Anyway, great post, flashbacks and all.

By: Enrique S

Enrique S — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 22:50:08 +0000

Vague emails are a pet peeve of mine. I don’t understand why people can’t just get to the point. The other thing that drives me crazy are the “FYI” type emails, where you have to read through about 10 responses to get to the original message. Great post.

By: Shauna

Shauna — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 19:10:49 +0000

Btilliant! Our district manager is the QUEEN of number 5. Once, in the span of 3.5 hours, she sent 34 emails……

By: Atschikura

Atschikura — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 10:22:57 +0000

Hi,

This is Atschikura (my nickname) from Turkey. I have read your weblog post called “Nine Ways to Devastate Productivity” and translated into Turkish (Atschikura follows the CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license terms). You can see the translation at http://www.internet.com.tr/atschikura/5403/ .

I would like to give credits to the original poster but I couldn’t find the name and email contact details anywhere on the blog. No contact info at all?

Best wishes,
Atschikura