How many times have you sent an email to the wrong person by mistake? Replied in anger and regretted it later? Realised you made a typo seconds after pressing the send key? Stupid email tricks, or d’oh-mails as Homer Simpson would call them, are easily avoided with four neat hacks:
- Write names last. Write the email THEN write the names of the people you are sending it to. This will give your subconscious a few seconds to ring the alarm bell.
- Don’t send till you’re ready. Put some gibberish text in the cc field. When you press send, your email system won’t recognise it and it’ll stop it going out. Only when you’re completely happy with the email do you take out the gibberish. (Thanks to the Business Writing blog for this tip.)
- Ten-minute delay. Set up a rule in Outlook to delay outgoing email by ten minutes. Go to Rules and Alerts, create a new rule, start with a blank rule, check messages after sending, press next and select ‘defer delivery by a number of minutes.’ The messages stick in your outbox for a few minutes so you can cool down and think twice.
- Don’t confuse names. Use people’s surnames or full names in the address boxes. You may know lots of Steves but they probably have different surnames. This will stop you accidentally sending the email to the wrong person. Alternatively, if you have two very similar names alter the contact data to avoid sending an email to the wrong person. Ten years I ago, I was working for two companies and my patrons in both companies were called Steve. I was constantly sending the wrong email to the wrong Steve.
You might also like to read my tips on effective email writing.
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Hi – cool blog Matthew, good one.
I had a tendency to write scathing emails in anger then regret sending them later. Now I let myself write the email and really let rip. Then I delete it and don’t reply until I have calmed down.
I find that writing the sarcastic email is in fact better therapy than actually sending it, as you don’t get left with a nasty taste of fear (of repercussions) in your mouth.