@Cairene: Thanks for the trackback – and I’m glad this helped.

@Janice: I never thought about the air we share as the connective piece. Brilliant!

Oh, and I really should say that my best stuff comes from working with friends and clients. Without them, I’d be hard-up to come up with a good post.

@Mike: “I find that as long as you are keeping people informed that they feel much more confident that their needs and desires are being worked on and will be met.”

Dead-on. It also lowers the frequency of that “did you get my email?” message that comes later on.

I fall down with too many folders, so I try to leave them in my Inbox just so that it bugs me. I’ve learned that additional focus does me better than it being hidden in a “reply-to” folder. But the point is still the same: do what works for you to get the appropriate reply back as soon as you can.

@TheGirlPie: Ah, my mysterious friend – glad to see you pop in. I’m closer to solving the clues…

It’s hard to change those expectations, especially when they’ve (accidentally) evolved into part of your brand. Unfortunately, it’s all too easy for such a style of correspondence to take your time hostage, and then other things suffer. I’m curious to know how you’re planning to phase in the change.

I haven’t reached the point where I need to seriously think about using auto responders, and honestly, I hope I never do. (Naive, perhaps.) What I mean is that I hope that the people I hang out with (personally and professionally) respect me and my time as much as I respect them and theirs. That’s my biggest beef with my green-suit life: for some reason, my superiors have no problem giving me two hours to respond to something that takes four to do so. That’s a saga in and of itself.

@George: Thanks so much for pointing that out and helping me make this post better. It’s fixed now.

@Diane: I know exactly what you mean. Whereas I hate getting the emails where I don’t know what information I’m supposed to get and act on, I also love actually connecting with people. The tricky thing is when you have mixed email messages – you know, the ones that contain both transactional and connective information. I try to separate the content for easy conversation, but sometimes it’s hard to do.

@Vered: I’ve noticed your efficiency in emails in our conversations; I’ve always attributed it to you being uber efficient and respecting our time rather than it being curt, fwiw. I’m wondering how this will affect your processes (which I’m still intending to highlight.)

I think I tend to view all email as short business interactions that need to move quickly in and out of inboxes.

I am going to give this some thought.

Vered – MomGrinds last blog post..Sex Sells? You Tell Me

Anyway, I think I’ve realized for a while now that it IS about connecting. And you just can’t do that in two minutes.

Diane Whiddon-Browns last blog post..Writing Every Day

I do employ a crafted template that I personalize for routine replies, but I’m working to change expectations of response time, my own, and others’. I don’t want to be so speedy that it’s obvious I couldn’t have written a unique reply to the potential client asking routine questions, so early “end of day” batching is good for that. But I expect myself to reply as if we’re chatting, and many who communicate with me have come to expect an IM-like conversation at the drop of a hat… so I must change my own behavior to change theirs.

While I understand the many uses/benefits of auto responders, I know I get some clients just because I was the first of their queried pros to answer the phone or reply to their message, so I do like to reply quickly to new potentials. Thanks for reminding me about the whole purpose of connecting, instead of just replying.

I couldn’t agree more that email fills multiple roles. As you say, there are transactional emails, and there are correspondence emails. No need for building connection and emotional resonance for transactional. The trick is having the wisdom to know which emails are which

I really like sending a “I’m working on a complete and accurate answer” message right away. I’ve been focusing overcommunicating lately – I find that as long as you are keeping people informed that they feel much more confident that their needs and desires are being worked on and will be met. Delayed responses allow ambiguity and doubts to creep in.

I do still adhere to my inbox zero practice though. If I decide that I can’t craft an appropriate response within the time available when processing mail, I move the item to my Action folder, which contains all emails (usually very few) that require a response in the very near future, but don’t rise to the level of creating a task in the tracking system.
This ties in well with the GTD 2 minute do it now principle (a thoughtful reply can easily take 5-10 minutes) and keeps me focused on the task of processing email. If I write a thoughtful response to correspondence, I lose most or all of my email processing momentum.

Sean Platt of Writer Dad fame, included a reader’s whole response as a guest post today, because he’d been so moved by an email exchange.

Emails are private, personal. As short or as long as you want them to be. They’re tailored to the person who’s reading them but expressed through the filter of the person writing. Many of the best articles I’ve ever written came from thoughts I’d expressed first in emails to friends and colleagues.

Breathe in, breathe out. Know where the connection is in the breathing analogy you mentioned in another post? We all share the same air.

I enjoyed this post and I’m glad Naomi linked to it. Thanks! ~janice