How to Answer E-Mails Quickly
Cut back on your email typing time with this easy trick.Â
People love to send me two-line emails saying, “Hi! Hope all is well. What’s up with you?” It drives me nuts, because when life is interesting, the answer is longer than I have time to type, especially since I’ve already told some variant of the story to a dozen people.
The solution: Create a standard response to a “What’s up?” message and save it in a known location, or program it as a keyboard macro. That way, when someone asks what’s up, it’s a simple cut-and-paste to give your answer. It may take a few minutes to write the initial message, but then you can simply revisit and update it monthly and you’ll always be ready to answer the vague question. This strategy will work for any question you get asked frequently at work and in your personal life.
Picking up the phone can be another great time saver when it comes to “What’s up?” emails, and I explain why in this Quick Tip.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock
About the Author
Stever Robbins was the host of the podcast Get-it-Done Guy from 2007 to 2019. He is a graduate of W. Edward Deming’s Total Quality Management training program and a Certified Master Trainer Elite of NLP. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Sciences from MIT.Â
