Email Productivity Tips #1: Delay your email sending to get a second chance
posted by Mike Petsalis in Email Productivity on Mar 28, 2011
How many times has this happened to you?
- You furiously type an email, enter the names of the recipients, click send, then about 20 seconds later you remember that it should have gone to one more person. You go to your Sent Items, find the email, then forward it to the person you forgot, knowing that they will be temporarily shut out of the discussion thread if one ensues.
- Or, you finished that perfect, well-thought out email, clicked send, and then remembered that you forgot to add one last important point. Egad, you will have to pull out the ‘Please ignore last message’ banner!
- Or, you type an angrymail (which you know you should never do!), click send, then suffer sender’s remorse, then scramble to try to recall the message, with little chance of success.
Admit you’ve done it, I certainly know that I have.
Outlook 2007, and in fact most email clients, offer the capability to delay the sending of an email after you click the Send button. In Outlook, simply create a rule that does the following: check messages after sending, choose to enter a delay before sending the message, exclude messages that are sent directly to you if you want. Your rule should look something like the window below when you’re done.
I suggest you set the delay at either 1 or 2 minutes, not more, not less. If you set it at 3 minutes or more, and you are one of those people that type out a couple of quicky emails before you leave the office and close your laptop, then you will have to wait 3 minutes, or more, for them to be sent. It will feel like an eternity. Anything less than 1 minute won’t give you enough time to change context and suddenly remember the item you forgot. So, stay with 1 or 2 minutes.
Also keep in mind, this is a client-side rule and it will therefore only run when Outlook is running. It will not work if you are sending email from your Blackberry.
Now, you can also do this for each email as you send it, but I think that defeats the purpose. The time it will take you to set the delay for the current email you’re sending would be enough to serve the purpose of giving you a little extra time to think. Using delay on a specific email serves you better when you truly want something to be sent much later after you write it.
Share your own email productivity tips and I’ll post them in this series.
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