Concentrate on what’s important! And this, by the way, is good advice not only for the recipient but also for the sender.

Back in the year 2000, say the statistics, 48.3 billion emails were sent in Germany alone. Until about 2007, growth in email traffic was roughly linear but from then on it became exponential, so that by 2013 the figure had already passed 500 billion.

In 2018, more than 848 billion emails were sent

Countless strategies and tips can be found on how to get to grips with this deluge of information. But all the advice looks at it from the point of view of the recipient. Is there none for the authors of those millions of pointless emails?

The annoying habit of “copying in everyone who occurs to me”

My experience is that behind this practice lies an attempt to share responsibility with others. If it comes to an argument, you can then point out that everyone else knew about it too. The real question, though, is whether the others actually do share the responsibility. If not, then please don’t copy them in! After all, experience suggests that anyone who feels they're not being kept informed will let you know without any prompting. The fact that email is not the right medium for keeping everyone informed about everything is self-evident from the fact that ultimately, absolutely nobody could possibly read the resulting flood of emails. Decide in advance, therefore, who really needs to know about any particular matter. That aside, there are other ways, too, of making sure that information is exchanged on a mutually efficient and sustainable basis – by setting a fixed day of the week, for instance, for a particular topic.

Cut out thoughtless forwarding

Why forward an email, when the address is already clearly visible in the “To” field? I can see no real sense in such behaviour. Please, forwarder, take a look at the list of recipients first. Getting the same email two or even three times is simply irritating! And with forwarding, again, ask yourself – does the recipient really need this information?

KISS – Keep it short and simple

Setting out the information clearly and completely would be a great help – queries tend to bloat the conversation unnecessarily. Niceties such as greetings and sign-offs don’t prevent you from being brief and setting things out in a short and understandable form. After an introduction that says “...I have the following comments on the planned procedure:...”, it is not impolite to number those following comments. It makes them easier to answer!

Dear author of emails,

Be aware of your responsibilities and think, when you are writing your emails and before you send them, about who you’re writing to, why, and how you are writing. For the put-upon email recipient, a tip: set up rules in your email program to make sure that emails from specified senders end up in a new folder that you’ve created for that purpose. And as for the name of the folder, how about ‘Irritating emails’?

Martin Auerbach