This article is currently popular on Forbes. This is the best part:
It’s easy to think of email as a way to get something done quickly, but when you do this to the extreme, you come across as inhuman. You wouldn’t walk into someone’s office and hand them a report to do without acknowledging them somehow. Jumping straight into the nitty-gritty might seem like the most effective thing to do, but it leaves a lasting negative impression.
Fixing this one is simple. Just take an extra second to greet the person you’re writing to. You don’t have to ask your recipient about his or her weekend. Just a simple acknowledgment of the individual as a human being is all it takes. This keeps the tone much more respectful than it would be if you were to simply send assignments.
** Inserts leg into wood chipper **
E-mail is a fucking disgrace. Almost no one understands how to use it — people basically think they’re using it because it’s “fast” and “easy,” both of which aren’t entirely accurate — and no one has any tangible idea around length, etiquette, and pretty much every other aspect of it. It’s an amazing train wreck on a daily basis.
This quick post, though, is about what e-mail did to humanity in the workplace. It’s one factor — not the only one by any means — that’s slaughtering that idea. People fire off e-mails instead of talking to others. Engagement drops. This surprises people? It shouldn’t. Read that pull-quote above. “Just a simple acknowledgment of the individual as a human being.”
Can you believe we’ve arrived at 2015 and that sentence even needs to be written about a form of human communication? That is terrifying.
Oh, and PS: please, for the love of Christ, put some context behind an e-mail you send.
