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FT editor Roula Khalaf selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Last week I discovered that something I never knew existed had already been deemed hopelessly unpleasant.
Ending an email by bragging about a book you’re “currently reading” is trending downward as fast as the workout overalls, the sunday time declared Style magazine.
I found this news disconcerting. “Who puts something like that at the end of an email?” I asked anyone within earshot at the office.
Many people, was the response. This was true, as a search of my own inbox confirmed.
It turns out that people have been letting me know for years that they’ve been reading books about the hidden cost of stress, home abortions, and something called “synchrodestiny” by self-help guru Deepak Chopra.
Not everyone was trying to show off. Some worked for book publishers, where these types of approvals are encouraged. Others worked for performance coaches, who no doubt also encourage their staff to write that sort of thing.
But one of them was a real performance coach, and she ended her email with news of something else: her current “wellness approach,” which was walking in nature three times a week.
I find this type of behavior more unhelpful than annoying. The fact that I didn’t realize what anyone was reading or focusing on until I went to look for it suggests that these alerts are less useful than senders imagine.
I also find them less annoying than firms that advertise a shipper’s OBE or using an app that tracks how much cycle they perform.
But all of this confirms how far humble email approval has come since the early days of office email, when it amounted to little more than “best wishes” followed by a name and job title. It’s not exactly clear when approval became just another tool in the arsenal of self-promotion deployed in much of modern corporate life, but I don’t see it fading away anytime soon.
The same applies to a more sobering fact that is itself a telling commentary on the state of office email: the growing number of people turning to a firm that politely tells email senders not to wait an answer.
A man I know who works in a sprawling international network where email bombardment is a constant threat has a signature that says: “I get a lot of emails and I can’t respond to them all. Please call if urgent.”
He puts the message in parentheses, which softens the blow, as does a journalist I know who uses a similar signature to manage the flood of unsolicited emails he receives daily from around the world.
Some go further by using something I often think about setting up myself: a permanent out-of-office message warning senders to prepare for disappointment.
Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson has long had one that, as of last week, says this:
“Thank you for your email. Due to the volume of daily messages, which usually exceed the number of minutes of the work day, I am very sorry that I cannot respond to all of them.
“My students, colleagues and family remain my top priorities, and when I have a window open, I will go through the backlog of messages in an attempt to respond to as many as I can.” Edmondson then adds the addresses of other people who deal with his agenda and his requests for intervention.
She tells me the message is permanent, but is sometimes updated to address things that make her more unavailable, like an assistant being on vacation.
“My view is that it’s better to alert people that capacity limitations will make them unlikely to respond to most messages, rather than simply not respond at all,” he says. “And truly at a rate of more than 500 per day it would not be feasible to respond to all of them. . . Poor me.”
She is correct. Email has exploded to the point that the average worker in the UK and US receives at least minus 32 emails a day in 2022. That adds up to 21 instant messages, 13 text messages, and 12 individual phone calls, Statista says.
Other research suggests that the number of emails received is higher. But whatever it is, it’s too much. So use an email signature for personal PR if you want. But don’t be surprised if they don’t see it, or be offended by a warning – you may never get a response.