Transcripts

Mike Song, author of the book The Hamster Revolution How to Manage Your Email Before it Manages You…

This was the big wow: that over a month of every year is basically wasted as a result of email.

Mike says we overuse email, often it's unnecessary and often it's not even appropriate.

Not only should email not be used for any type of a controversial or emotional or a potentially touchy situation between employees - say a performance review or things like that, these are being conducted sometimes via email. And a person could have a certain type of sense of humor that just doesn't translate into email. So, I strongly recommend carefully looking at your message before you send it out and also if you feel like you're responding and there's some anger, wait 24 hours before you hit "send."

If you're sending email to the person that sits five feet away from you, perhaps there's a problem. And Mike says, remember the less email you send the less you'll get.

When we did a large training for Capital One, we helped them reduce their email line by 20%. And what we found was a big surprise, they got 10% fewer incoming emails when they sent out 20% fewer outgoing emails. So there really is time to be saved by that simple idea of just being more judicious with email overall.