If you find yourself constantly getting sucked into long, ping-pong style email conversations, using if-then statements might help you save some time.
Photo by Epicantus.
Treating email like a chat client can eat up a ton of time and fill up your inbox fast. If you want to cut down on the back-and-forth, Mike Schmitz at Asian Efficiency recommends you anticipate any problems or questions that might come up in your initial email. If-then statements make it easy to do that. Schmitz shares an example:
Hi Thanh,
Please let me know your thoughts on this new design. If you don’t like it, then let me know what improvements or changes you’d like made. If you do like it, then pass it along to Zack so he can start using it in his documents.
You can use if-then statements to set up meeting times more efficiently, suggest backup plans if things don’t work out and add clarification so you have fewer emails coming back to you. You won’t be able to anticipate every possible issue, but it’s better to be proactive.
4 Tips for Eliminating Email Ping Pong [Asian Efficiency]
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