When you send out an email to a group of people, simply putting them all on the to field is bad form.  First, it exposes all the email addresses, so everyone can see everyone else's emails.  Second, if someone accidentally hits "Reply All" instead of "Reply" their response can easily be sent to the entire group instead of just you. A few years ago, I got an email from a friend who was studying at Yale.  It was a yearly update about what was going on in his life.  He put everyone he knew in the To: field.  This included old classmates, current professors, relatives, etc. One of his friends got the message and decided to respond with an update of all the stuff going on in her … [Read more...]

Previously I wrote about why I prefer to use IMAP for my primary email accounts. Gmail recently enabled IMAP access for their accounts. Not only does it work for accounts at gmail.com, but it also works with their hosted apps account where you use your own domain. Productivity501.com uses Google's hosted apps for email, so IMAP is a very welcome addition. You can find this control by going to Settings > Forwarding POP & IMAP. Google did some creative things to make their concept of tags work within IMAP. Basically each tag becomes a folder, but that means it is possible to have the same item in multiple folders. There is also a folder called "All Mail" that will hold your … [Read more...]

Boing! You have another email. Boing! Boing! There are two more emails to deal with. Right as you get ready to leave for lunch Boing! Boing! Boing! Arghhh! This is not what email is for! If you want to get more done, turn off the audio notification for email. You can turn it back on if you are waiting for an important message, but leave it off while you are trying to do normal work. The whole point of email is so you can communicate quickly but asynchronously. That means it is ok to wait a few minutes before typing a reply. You can't let every email be an interruption. Go ahead and check your email every 15 minutes if you must, but spend those 15 minutes in between getting … [Read more...]

The world we live in is so based around electronic communication that taking the time to do something the old fashion way can really make you stand out from the crowd. Following up meeting a new business contact with a short note in your own handwriting can form a lasting impression that would be difficult to achieve with email. If you've become too dependent on email's spell check, go ahead and write your message on the computer before copying it to your note. It may seem silly to do this, but if it lets you better compose your thoughts and makes you look professional, it is well worth the effort. … [Read more...]

Last week I talked about how I use IMAP for my main accounts. I do have some Gmail addresses as well, and I think I've come up with an optimal setup for keeping things synced with my main laptop computer. Basically I only download emails to my main laptop. If I need to read something from somewhere else, I'll use the web version and look under the archives if I need to lookup older emails. Under Settings > Forwarding and POP you'll want to Enable POP so you can download it with your email client. Then you have to decide what to do with messages once you've downloaded them. You can keep them in your inbox, delete them or archive them. I prefer to archive them. That keeps them … [Read more...]