This is Stever Robbins with the Get-it-Done Guy’s Quick and Dirty Tips to Work Less and Do More.
Today, we’ll answer a question that came in on the voicemail line:
Hi Stever, I love your podcast, it’s been a great help so far, but I have a question. I work for an elected official, and politeness, and public image are always very important, so when I send an e-mail, I can’t just launch into my question or polite answer. I have to a little of that polite chit-chat at the beginning ant the end of the email, but I send so many e-mails that I end up spending a lot of time on that, and I think that it’s wasteful time, but yet, it’s necessary. Do you have any suggestions on how I can cut back the amount of time that I spend on those things, or what is the appropriate amount of politeness at the beginning of an e-mail. Thanks very much, and I look forward to hearing your answer.
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I feel your pain. Polite chit-chat takes a lot of typing. Signatures take a lot of typing, and answering the same question over and over and over takes typing. Fortunately, there are several most excellent solutions to your e-mail woes.
The quick and dirty tip is to use stationery, macros, and signatures to make e-mail quick and easy to type.
Stationery, also called a template, is a completely pre-written e-mail message. A macro is a character or short word you can type that magically turns into a much longer sentence or paragraph. And signatures are things like, “Sincerely, Jane,” that get added automagically to the end of every message.
Stationery is useful when you have a lot to say and you say it often. If you get the same question over and over, set up stationery with the answer. Next time someone writes in with that question, call up the template, change a few words to fit their situation, and send it off. You work for a politician. You could prepare stationery with standard replies for common issues. You might have one template that addresses “The Mayor’s position on traffic lights for children.” Or you could have one template to reply to people who want traffic lights, and another template for people who like watching kids dodge cars as run across the street.
If your concern is the polite chit-chat at the start and end of messages, you could set up stationery with all the polite chit-chat in place and type into the middle of the letter. Or, you could use macros.
A macro is a keystroke or short set of characters that turn into something longer when you type them. Let’s say your boss has you saying “No” to a dozen different requests each day: a dog show invitation, a request for money, and someone claiming to be a long-lost child, asking to be added to the will.
These are pretty different. You want to respond to each individually, but your responses can have paragraphs in common. All might start like this: “Mr. Boss appreciates your letter. Your tragic plight is touching.” Then you add a paragraph or two crushing that person’s lifelong hopes and dreams, and you finish up with, “Mr. Boss regrets that he can’t do more for your deeply troubling situation.”
What you do is define a macro so you type “opening” and it turns into Big Boss’s statement of appreciation. You define another macro so you type “wrapup” and it turns into the paragraph on regrets. Then to type the full letter, you just type “opening,” the custom paragraphs, and “wrapup” and there it is!
I use a macro so I just type GIDG and it turns into “The Get-it-Done Guy’s Quick and Dirty Tips to Work Less and Do More.” That way I can mention my show by its full name and save my fingers for more important things, like picking the pretzels out of snack mix.
Signatures are just what they sound like, “Sincerely, Senator Duzzalot.” You set a signature in your e-mail program and it gets added to every outgoing message. You’ll never have to type “Sincerely” again. Depending upon your boss, this could save your integrity.
The specifics for setting up stationery, macros, and signatures depend on what computer and email program you use. Search your help file for the words “stationery,” “templates,” “macros,” and “signatures” to find the details. I’ve prepared a handout with step-by-step instructions for some common e-mail programs that you can download from a link in this episode’s transcript.
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Work Less, Do More, and have a Great Life!
