I have been using my blackberry to send emails for almost 3 years now, and I have noticed some key benefits of sending emails –
– helps me stay on top of things
– it allows me to respect other people’s time and schedule
– avoid the phone call yo-yo
– helped me to communicate complex ideas in a short and sensible way
– access important info in cases of emergency
Disclaimer
This all fine an good but you have to remember that the people you are dealing with check their email often. I should also warn you that the things you are about to read will sound very simple and obvious but a lot of the time we don’t work it into our daily lives.
Respecting People’s Schedule and Staying on Top of things
Emails generally allow people to deal with them at their convenience. You could get a much better response out of people you are contacting if you are not demanding their full attention while they are in the middle of something. It could be in the middle of an important meeting or just having some personal time to relax, whether its your boss, business partner or your employee, we are all human and we all love to decide when we will tackle certain things. Some people like to deal with certain types of issues at 1 am and others like to look at them at 9 am. We are all different.
I know we don’t always have that choice, but we can do our best to make it happen more regularly for ourselves and others. I found that when you allow reliable people to have some choice in when they tackle things, it helps out everyone in the long run. Everyone just seems to be less stressed because they are working at their convenience.
The trick is to making this happen is to, PLAN, PLAN PLAN. This way you will be able send out things early enough to give people some time to check their email, digest what is actually in email and act of it, in a timely fashion. They might need to re-work their schedule to accommodate a meeting, accept the assignment or make a decision on a change to a proposal.
Its always good to have that time to play with, something might come up, as it always does and that little time might be your lifesaver. Besides who likes to be in the crunch everything seems like it had to be done yesterday! When stress seems to be an air borne and spreading faster than an Ebola in an African village!
Hmmmm, Wait ! Stop …. those you who are addicted to crisis, ignore that last part, you already have Ebola!
For the rest of us we rather ZERO STRESS. Also even if things do end up coming down to the crunch. The date on those emails can really save your behind. We all know this oh too well!
Yeah, but its not just ideas, there are things like checklist, action items, directions etc that are definitely better sent in email. I don’t know about you, but I love to be able to pull back up the directions from email on my blackberry if you get lost!
Phone Call Yo-Yo
Phone calls can be disruptive especially so if you are in one of those meetings where passion seems to be oozing out of everyone’s forehead.
We know the cycle call – don’t get through, leave message. Call returned. You are busy.
You call back again … etc, all the while the hours are passing you by.
If you had sent an email and moved on to something else. The person could have read it at their convenience and respond to you, when their time frees up and then your answer would be waiting in your inbox. This helps alot if a group of people you need to respond to something. If you are on the road? that’s where blackberry comes in :-). Come on that was an easy question
The added benefit to this is that the email always stays in your inbox so you can go back to it anytime. Email is self documenting, no need to take notes, like you would on after a phone call.
Maybe your idea for that big fete doesn’t fly this year, but 2 years down the road you see another opportunity and go into your email, pull back up your idea, brush it off and boom you score.
Communicating Complex Ideas
I like to communicate some of the more complex ideas in email too. It really helps me to get my point across. I used to be notorious for not being able to express myself or sell my ideas but now that is a lot easier for me, I put my ideas down in point form and show the pros and the cons and people get it. Lol, so now I can actually get people to understand what is going on in my big head, took me long enough.
Having a blackberry makes it easy for me to do this away from a desk and that is big, big plus for me.
Emails and my blackberry can make my life a whole lot easier for sure.
I know alot of this is obvious, but we don’t actually put in practice day to day, especially when we get caught up in the moment and everything feels like it urgent and its really not. Take some time to think about what you are doing and
Blackberry – Email Screening tool
I have all my email accounts added on my black berry – it can hold up to 10 and that acts like my messages center, so emails, text messages, phone calls and facebook messages all come on my blackberry.
Yeah its a lot of stuff, but I just use the phone as a sort of messages screening tool so that i have an idea of what stuff is coming and, and for the urgent things I can stop what I am doing deal with them the same time.
The Blackberry allows me to make mail from certain people priority and then I can make each email account with a different tone. I can decide which tone will sound, if the phone will vibrate or not or if the led link will blink when new stuff comes in. I have a different email setting for each email account and definitely helps with screening.
I can see everything in one mail box or I can look at my emails in their individual inboxes.
This helps alot because its an easy way to look over all the different things bombarding me all in one place. It can be a chore to stay up to date on everything, but its alot easier when you can catch up anywhere you please!
Leave a Reply