ILLUSTRATIONS BY WREN MCDONALD

adding others to a correspon-

dence. Today, email programs

make it so easy to copy people on

an email thread—I mean, that cc

field is just sitting there, begging

you for an address or two or

seven—that it’s often abused.

Rather than asking whether it’s

crucial to include someone in an

email thread, we throw them into

the cc field, just in case. As a re-

sult, our inboxes are overbur-

dened with a zillion copied emails.

Even worse is when we find our-

selves struggling to make sense of

a long email thread to which we

have only just been added.

Before you respond to an

email that has been cc’ed to

multiple recipients, think about

whether you can remove anyone

from the thread. (Does every in-

dividual meeting attendee need

to know that yes, you’d like the

vegan lunch option?) If you’re

adding someone to a thread,

take the time to give them a

quick summary and some con-

text on why you’re adding them.

And please don’t cc people

when bcc-ing is called for, and

don’t bcc people when no cc-ing

is just fine.

Continued from page R1

@#!

JOURNAL REPORT|WORKPLACE TECHNOLOGY

Radio Silence

Perhaps it isn’t surprising that

so many of our colleagues

sometimes fail to reply to an

email. Or a Slack message,

tweet, DM, text message, Face-

book message, voice mail....

But however understandable,

it’s still frustrating to send out

a communication and get no

reply, especially if that reply is

necessary to move your own

work forward. We are in a col-

lective bind: We can’t expect a

universal commitment to

speedy replies as long as we

keep cc-ing everybody and in-

undating them with emails, but

as long as we don’t get speedy

replies, we may need to keep

sending out reminders so that

eventually wemightgetare-

sponse.

The solution involves a mix

of communication and re-

straint. The restraint comes

first: If you email or text your

colleagues constantly, they may

ignore you out of necessity.

That’s especially true if you’re

prone to lengthy messages. In a

previous job, I discovered that I

was legendary for the length of

my emails—something I discov-

ered only when a few col-

leagues started joking around,

in my presence, about who had

received the longest message.

That taught me to be a lot

more disciplined about con-

densing my communications.

Now, when I’m dealing with

overloaded correspondents, I

put the action item in the first

line of my email (so it’s visible

even before my colleague opens

the message), and then follow

it with context, so a message

might begin, “Please tell me

whether I can send the Yeung

brief without your further

feedback,” before proceeding to

summarize the issues where

feedback might be provided.

Once you’ve done your part

to become a more efficient and

less demanding correspondent,

ask your colleague, client or

manager how they’d like you to

handle your communications,

and how they’d like you to pro-

ceed if you don’t get a timely

response. Would your client

prefer a weekly email message,

or do they like seeing your

daily updates, even if they

don’t reply? Would your man-

ager prefer to be updated on

Slack, instead of email? And

can you take silence as license

to proceed with the direction

you’ve outlined in a text mes-

sage or email, or should you

follow up by phone to get posi-

tive assent? A little upfront

communication about commu-

nication can make radio silence

less frustrating, and less fre-

quent.

Channel

hopping

Here’s how not to handle radio

silence: channel hopping. When

I asked people for their tech

peeves, I heard a lot of com-

plaints about co-workers who

chase them from channel to

channel, following an email

with a Slack message, and a

Slack message with a text. That

kind of channel hopping con-

tributes to overall communica-

tions overload, makes it hard

for colleagues to know where

and how to respond, and com-

plicates the job of keeping

track of a conversation thread.

If you’re being chased across

channels by a colleague—which

can happen even if you’re not

delinquent in your replies—it’s

best to tackle the problem

head-on. Go back to the place

the conversation started,

whether that’s on Slack, email

or a Google Doc, and let your

colleague know that you need

the conversation to stay in one

place so that you can keep

track of it. If you have a pre-

ferred way to stay in touch,

this is the moment to share

that preference.

Tangled

threads

I heard lots of complaints

about co-workers who don’t

understand how to thread their

comments on Slack or email, or

who start new threads when

there’s already a channel or

conversation under way. If you

don’t know what I’m talking

about, then it’s very likely

you’re annoying a lot of your fel-

low workers.

Even those who are at least

vaguely aware of the idea of

threading can sometimes be

careless about following the

structure of a conversation, in-

stead starting a new thread, or

dropping their comment in the

wrong place, simply because

they don’t want to invest the

time or effort in figuring out

where it belongs.

If you find yourself the victim

of an email tangent (or even a

single but overly extended email

thread), your best bet is email

surgery: Copy and paste the

most relevant portion of the

thread into a new email, and

then start a new thread with a

more accurate subject line.

Ding, ding,

ding, ding...

When I die, I want to be buried

with a giant battery and a per-

petually ringing phone loud

enough to echo through the

cemetery, just to get revenge on

every person who has ever sub-

jected me to their switched-on

ringers in meetings, coffee

shops, conference hotel rooms or

open offices.

If my research is any indica-

tion, there will be lots of dings

and rings and chirps in lots of

cemeteries from office workers

who feel the way I do.

This is one of the most per-

plexing workplace irritants, be-

cause notification overload is as

taxing to intended recipients as

it is to all their nearby col-

leagues. It’s also relatively easy

to solve, or at least ameliorate:

Set your phone to silent, and

you can annoy your colleagues

with intermittent vibrations in-

stead of your Avengers-themed

ringtone. (Or you can be really

considerate, and take your

phone with you when you wan-

der away from your desk—or at

least leave it on a padded sur-

face that will render its vibra-

tions truly silent.)

Techresistance

Then there are the colleagues

When working with

remote colleagues,

people “can’t get

the internet to work;

couldn’t see that email

on my iPad; can’t

make edits

to that Word doc;

was in a bad service

area,” but somehow

find the time and

capability to manage

their fantasy

football lineup.

— Christopher Reilly

Reply all.... It would

be so simple for

Microsoft et al. to

add a dialog box

when selecting reply

all - “Do you really

need to reply all?”

— Duane Paulson

[One] tech pet peeve

is the desire to bring

your phones to

meetings. Unless there

is an immediate

emergency or crisis,

I am sure people can

be separated from

their beloved device

for a few minutes or

an hour.

— Fredrick Lee

People who send out

calendar invites

without a one-touch

dial-in for phone

number including the

passcode. ...Try

remembering a 9+

digit code while trying

to juggle boarding

pass, phone etc. (or

worse, trying to scrawl

the code on a scrap of

paper while doing all

of the above in a

security line/in a cab/

walking between

meetings).

— Anne P. Ogilby

The

Tech

Habits

That

DriveUs

Crazy

Voices

From

Readers

R2|Friday,March6, 2020 THEWALLSTREETJOURNAL.