EMAIL CHARTER

Here's a great article I just read called "The Email Charter." I'm not taking credit for it, but I think it deserves to be passed along. It started as a blog post by Chris Anderson and Jane Wulf. If you find yourself, like I do, drowning in e-mails, pass this along.

10 Rules to Reverse the Email Spiral
1. Respect Recipients' Time
This is the fundamental rule. As the message sender, the onus is on YOU to minimize the time your email will take to process. Even if it means taking more time at your end before sending.

2. Short or Slow is not Rude
Let's mutually agree to cut each other some slack. Given the email load we're all facing, it's OK if replies take a while coming and if they don't give detailed responses to all your questions. No one wants to come over as brusque, so please don't take it personally. We just want our lives back!

3. Celebrate Clarity
Start with a subject line that clearly labels the topic, and maybe includes a status category [Info], [Action], [Time Sens] [Low Priority]. Use crisp, muddle-free sentences. If the email has to be longer than five sentences, make sure the first provides the basic reason for writing. Avoid strange fonts and colors.

4. Quash Open-Ended Questions
It is asking a lot to send someone an email with four long paragraphs of turgid text followed by "Thoughts?". Even well-intended-but-open questions like "How can I help?" may not be that helpful. Email generosity requires simplifying, easy-to-answer questions. "Can I help best by a) calling b) visiting or c) staying right out of it?!"

5. Slash Surplus cc's
cc's are like mating bunnies. For every recipient you add, you are dramatically multiplying total response time. Not to be done lightly! When there are multiple recipients, please don't default to 'Reply All'. Maybe you only need to cc a couple of people on the original thread. Or none.

6. Tighten the Thread
Some emails depend for their meaning on context. Which means it's usually right to include the thread being responded to. But it's rare that a thread should extend to more than 3 emails. Before sending, cut what's not relevant. Or consider making a phone call instead.

7. Attack Attachments
Don't use graphics files as logos or signatures that appear as attachments. Time is wasted trying to see if there's something to open. Even worse is sending text as an attachment when it could have been included in the body of the email.

8. Give these Gifts: EOM NNTR
If your email message can be expressed in half a dozen words, just put it in the subject line, followed by EOM (= End of Message). This saves the recipient having to actually open the message. Ending a note with "No need to respond" or NNTR, is a wonderful act of generosity. Many acronyms confuse as much as help, but these two are golden and deserve wide adoption.

9. Cut Contentless Responses
You don't need to reply to every email, especially not those that are themselves clear responses. An email saying "Thanks for your note. I'm in." does not need you to reply "Great." That just cost someone another 30 seconds.

10. Disconnect!
If we all agreed to spend less time doing email, we'd all get less email! Consider calendaring half-days at work where you can't go online. Or a commitment to email-free weekends. Or an 'auto-response' that references this charter. And don't forget to smell the roses.

The Rebekah Principle

I remember when gas station attendants pumped your gas, cleaned your windshield and checked your oil and fluid levels for you while they were filling your gas tank. (Actually, I was one of those attendants for a while.) Today, the best we can hope for is that they be polite when we go into the gas bar and hand over our money after doing all of those things for ourselves. That's a far cry from the woman in the title of this blog.

I'm not sure who coined the phrase first, but "The Rebekah Principle" is taken from an Old Testament story found in Genesis, chapter 24. It's the story of the selection of a wife for the Jewish Patriarch, Isaac. Abraham had sent his chief servant to find the right woman from his home country. The servant arrived at the well which was a center of activity. The women of the area were arriving to draw water from the well.

A young woman named Rebekah came to draw water and the servant asked if it would be possible for her to draw him some water to drink. She not only drew water for him, but willingly drew water for all of his camels as well. While this encounter is only given a couple of verses in Scripture, it's important to see the details. She drew water for ten camels before she stopped. A thirsty camel can drink up to 30 gallons of water in 10 minutes. But let's say, for arguments sake, that they weren't all that thirsty and drank ten gallons each. That's 100 gallons of water drawn by hand from a well. Even if the well were only a few feet deep, such a commitment would take considerable time, measured in hours, not minutes; yet Rebekah did so willingly.

The result of Rebekah being willing to do more than was required of her was that she was selected to become the wife of Isaac. She will forever be remembered for being willing to go the extra mile: this is the kind of person God uses.

There are a lot of life lessons we can get from Rebekah's example. Here are a few.

"There are no traffic jams on the second mile."
I'm not sure who first said this, but I heard it first from Zig Ziglar. Very simply what it means is that if you want to stand out in whatever field you've chosen, go the extra mile. Do what others are unwilling to do.

I've found that there are at least three different types of people:
1. People who don't do what they're supposed to do.
2. People who only do what they have to.
3. People who do what they are required to do... and then some.

Think about it, which of these people would you want working for you? If you were choosing a company to do business with, wouldn't you choose a business that goes above and beyond; a company that will see that you are satisfied? If you were hiring an employee, would you want the guy who will show up only when it's convenient, or the guy who's committed to get the job done right?

"If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing right."
My mother used to tell me this when I was haphazard in cleaning my room. My response was usually something like "well I guess it's not worth doing then." What do you expect? I was a teenager.

Colossians 3:23-24 says "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving." This was Mother Teresa's secret: the people to whom she ministered, in her eyes, represented Jesus Himself. Each of them, therefore, were deserving of all of the dignity and love she could give.

We get one shot at this life, we want to do it well. In fact, there seems to be something built into human beings that takes a real satisfaction in a job well done. I've seen it in sports, the arts, church life and the business world. We were created to be productive and creative, when we aren't we sense the void, even if we can't describe it.

"In order to hear the words, 'well done,' we must first 'well do.'"
There are many principles that flow from this, including "play now, pay later, or pay now, play later." The point is that there are too many people who are not willing to pay the price for achieving excellence, yet who want the reward. This is one of my pet peeves with unions. They have a purpose, but often serve to reward people who are incompetent and lazy.

In our society at large, we find a culture of entitlement that can be stated like this: "the world owes me a living." Uh... wrong. God gives us life, talents and abilities: that is His gift to us. How we use this life and those gifts, talents and abilities is our gift to Him. The Bible is actually very clear about those who are unwilling to do what they are capable of doing. 2 Thessalonians 3:10 says "...If anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either."

There is so much that needs doing. There are so many challenges that must be met. There are so many hurting people and so many causes looking for a champion. How can we be satisfied to sit back and assume that someone else will do it? Take some time today to think about what it is that you were put on this earth to do. You are not a cosmic accident, you were created by God to do good works. For a clue to what that may be think about these questions: What do you cry about? What do you laugh about? What keeps you awake at night? The answer to those questions often leads to our passion.

Don't settle. Be all that you were meant to be.