NEWSFLASH: The Out-of-Office Autoreply that WILL change the world
Just got this autoreply from an email to Sacha Chua:
I will probably be away from my e-mail from March 8 to March 22, and if I come back to an e-mail backlog, I will DELETE ALL THE MAIL I RECEIVED DURING THE TIMESPAN. So if it’s important, please get in touch with me after March 23.
She is a visionary as far as I’m concerned. What an awesome way to stop the email backlog from even building up, and get people to find a better way to move projects forward while you’re away.
That better way can be a wiki. Here’s how to do it:
Start using a wiki well before you go on your next vacation. Get meeting agendas, minutes, projects, and documentation onto your wiki (See 21 Days of Wiki Adoption for a how-to guide).
Then, when you go on vacation, put this autoreply up so that instead of just filling your inbox, people are reminded that you’ll delete the backlog.
Add a line to the autoreply that links to the wiki and reminds people to put important things there.
Everyone else in your team can work on them while you’re away (instead of waiting for you, which causes you to dread returning from your vacation), and you can see the truly important things when you get back (and actually be excited when you return from your vacation).
Tim Moore says:
Mar 17th, 2008
To relate this back to your “reply-all” post from earlier today, one of the worst things I used to have to deal with at previous non-wiki-enlightened companies was returning from vacations to find an inbox filled with long discussions that I was CC’ed on. Having to read and delete message after message just to find the conclusions of these threads could take up the entire first day back, or longer. Not to mention all of the out-of-date daily status updates and other irrelevant junk.
Ideally, in a company that makes good use of a wiki, the only email you get would be things that are intended for you directly; things you really need to read. I have to say, things are pretty close to that now!
Sacha Chua says:
Mar 25th, 2008
You want visionary, read Luis Suarez’ blog. He is the _awesome._ =)
(And thanks!)
Stewart Mader says:
Mar 25th, 2008
@Sacha You’re welcome! Yes, Luis’ is awesome!
@Tim Yep, I hate the CC. It’s one of the most misused features in email, and should only be used very sparingly if at all.