Email Guerrilla Techniques 3

So many emails, so little time and you're still thinking about throwing that chair out of the window. Again, desperate times call for... Guerrilla Techniques!

As always, use at your own risk since your boss may not appreciate.

But first a few links to articles that helped me go from an average of 2'000+ messages in my inbox to less than 50:

• article series Inbox Zero at 43folders and Merlin Mann's presentation at Google.
• Gina Trapani's Trusted Trio at Lifehacker.

However, my Guerrilla Techniques are more fun...

Email Guerrilla Technique #3
If you receive very long emails, you can of course try to understand what you might have to do while

• supporting the killing of innocent trees
• showing off your excellent skills in analysis and synthesis
• and drawing a cute little graphic because otherwise there's just no way you will ever make sense of this monster of an email!

Or you could use a variant of Guerrilla Technique #2 ("I have no clue what you want."). In this case, just write back:

I'm currently working on several urgent projects. Please summarize in 2-3 bullet points and state in 1 sentence what you need from me.

If this happens a lot, you can also use Lifehacker's Texter to insert a standard text in less than 3 seconds (see also this previous post for more information about Texter).

And then have a coffee with the cute girl from marketing while you wait for a reply.
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