E-mail – one of the greatest invention of the modern world and a very useful tool for many a occasions. But I hate it when it rains e-mails. My company thrives on e-mail, everyday I get into office there are atleast 40 to 50 e-mails waiting for my attention. I dread opening my Inbox after a leave of few days. Reading and acting on my e-mails takes up an entire day. I’m a software developer hired to write code. I, however, write more e-mails than the number of lines of code on most of the days. Writing e-mails doesn’t interest me as much as writing code. And I can’t avoid e-mails too – its part of my job responsibility to reply to e-mail I receive within one business day. The question I tried answering is how to balance writing e-mails with writing code.  I have tried lot of things, some worked, some did not. However I have listed down all the things that I tried. See if something works for you..

1. Plan my coding – I don’t usually try to get as much coding as possible done in a day, instead I break it up so that I know before hand what I’m going to write on a day. Just concentrate on that bit and get it right.

2. Start early – Reach office before time, atleast 30 mins before the prescribed time. You reach office faster due to less traffic, start coding and finish off that days coding before lunch time. This way I have all the post lunch period for other activites. Infact, reaching office before time has so many benefits that it warrants a blog post by itself.

3. Use post lunch slump time for routine work -Attend to e-mails post lunch when the concentration levels are low.

4. Coding technique – Don’t start testing until the coding is complete.

5. Time management – Schedule pockets of time during your day to answer e-mail.

6. Minimize workplace distractions – Close the e-mail client ( outlook, mozilla thunderbird) during coding. Even e-mail alerts will distract you. Keep your IM client in busy mode, most people are sensible, they will understand and leave you alone. If its very urgent they can call you. Try setting your status to “I’m busy at work, only disturb me if its very urgent” for a few days and notice the difference.

7. Decide what is important – Its ok to ignore some e-mails or to delegate it to someone else to respond. If people really need some information and its urgent they’ll call you.

8. Be accessible on your terms – Always provide contact information so that people can reach you on phone incase they need some information urgently.

9. Minimize e-mail conversations by being efficient - After writing an e-mail just go through it once and think of the following – did you answer what is expected, put yourselfs in the other peoples shoes and try to come up with questions that may arise in their minds , does your e-mail answer those as well, if you need to provide some more information please do mention by when u can send that information and do send it either on or before its due. Keeping these tips when writing e-mails will greatly reduce the number of e-mails going forth on a subject.

10. Avoid e-mail communication whenever possible – Avoid e-mail, call up the person and talk to him. Its more personal, fast, and gives you the oppurtunity to develop a rapport with the person, especailly if you are geographically separated.

Now, what are you waiting for, try some of these ideas and let me know if they work for you, for that matter let me know even if it didn’t work for you. Go ahead, act – analyse – think – improve and give me the feedback in the comments. I would appreciate it.