Simple trick to increase your email efficiency

On average, you send around 34 emails a day and each is 240 words. That's more than 8000 words a day.

Some emails we send without thinking. Others we read over, and over (and over).

It takes around an hour to proof 1000 words. So that's a lot of time spent proofreading emails.

If you've ever wondered if all that time proofreading emails is well spent, then the great minds at Stanford are here to help. 

Carr & Stefaniak (2011) concluded that sending emails with grammatical errors reduces your credibility. BUT if you make errors and indicate the email was sent from a phone then you're mostly off the hook. 

Figure 1: The impact of grammatical errors in emails on your credibility, desktop versus phone.

My takeaway: add a sent from phone message to your DESKTOP email signature. But choose your audience wisely.

Two benefits:

1. It allows you to get straight to the point. You've only got 15-20 seconds to get your message across and people are less offended by brevity when they think the email is sent from a phone.

2. Reduces the time you take proofreading emails because grammatical errors don't dent your credibility as much.

A couple of less boring options:

• Sent from phone. Regularly foiled by autocorrect. But duck it.
• iPhone. iTypos. iApologise.
• Luke sent the message. Phone sent the typos.

If you want to make productivity your team's priority, get in touch with us at Building 20 (www.building20.co).