I already discussed the issues of Stop the meeting overload!, How to track (and optimize) your email traffic, How to tame your vacation email traffic, and Stop the context switching, reduce waste, and focus on value in 2021 and 2022.

I continue to deal with unhelpful chat messages, excessive emails, and experience big meetings dominated by a few, leaving many engineers questioning their presence. When multitasking begins, the sudden "what do you think ?" often attempts to reengage those who have disengaged from the talk – a common pattern in our new world of remote and hybrid (in-person and remote) collaboration.

If you have read this far, I assume you are in a similar boat. Let me go back to basics and see what I have learned and recommend for effective email, meetings, and chats.]

Email

Some email etiquettes and rules to follow are:

• Use chat, like Microsoft teams, or an in-person spit-balling whiteboard session for discussions or ideation, not emails.
• Only expect recipients on To to respond, not those on Cc (for your information) or Bcc (hidden).
• Keep an email on one topic and thread, do not split or mix it up.
• Do not change the subject or reuse a finished email thread for a new topic.
• Reply all with caution - you could start an email storm.

And a new one we have added to our list:

• Please provide context when you add someone to an email thread, especially a long one, so they do not have to spend time reading the thread backwards. Not everyone has Copilot for Microsoft 365 to get an AI assisted recap.

Meetings

As per the image above, some meeting etiquettes to improve your work:life balance and productivity:

• Give and get value or leave.
• Stop T-5 minutes before the end.
• No meetings on Friday.
• No meeting without agenda or purpose.
• Avoid acronyms or jargon.
• Limit your invite list to essential participants only, rather than inviting a large audience. Less is more!
• Write down notes and share them with action items - or use Copilot for Microsoft Teams to do it for you. I LOVE that productivity feature, powered by AI!
• Focus on the meeting, without laptops, when meeting in-person.

Do not make someone who arrives late to an in-person meeting in a huge building do pushups for each minute they are late – they might have run a long way from another meeting that was valuable but finished on time or ran over. This is another reason we need the T-5 minute rule, to allow people to move between back-to-back meeting.

Teams / Slack / Chat

As in scenario 1, I get stressed when people use chat programs like Microsoft Teams, Slack, or text messages to say "hi", "ping", or "do you have a second" and then make me wait for context.

Please do not take it personally - I do not react to these 'ello pings anymore, because it is unproductive. Before, I used to switch context, wait patiently, or politely ask for the missing context - but it is frustrating and distracting, especially when I am trying to focus.

Instead, as in scenario 2, please be courteous and say "Hi", but more importantly add the context and/or question. That way the receiver can decide whether to reply right away, or later.

Add NoHello to your email signature and/or your collaboration tool status message to remind everyone of keeping the collaboration simple and productive.

Anything else that drives you crazy?