The Ridiculousness of Reply All! Email Etiquette Microlearning Video #4 Just STOP the Insanity!

So am I talking to you? Yeah, you, you know who you are. That person likes to hit reply all to everyone on the distribution list to write the word thanks. Oh man. Yeah. We're going to talk about this one in this next video on the email etiquette microlearning series. Yeah, let's just stop doing that, please. Thank you. And let me refer back to some of the things I was sharing in the very first video in this series, that a lot of people get 100, 200, or more emails a day. A lot of people are working 2, 4, 6 hours a day just on their inbox. And so if you're the person that's hitting reply all Thanks. You just added yet another unnecessary few seconds to their day when they've already got too many emails coming in. And here's the problem. You ever seen somebody start riffing where somebody writes a funny little comment on email and then next thing you know, everybody's hitting reply all. So now it's not just one extra email they gotta deal with. 30 or 40. Yay! Yay! Yeah, let's stop doing that. Now, people often ask me, Randy, is there any relevant good reason to hit Reply All? And there's one. You have important information to add on to the previous email in the discussion. Something that's relevant and useful. However, even there, there's a little bit of a concern. What if you send one, then somebody else does a reply all to yours, then somebody else does a reply all to that one, and next thing you know, you are getting this giant cascade of emails going around to 50, 100, 200 people. How much time is that costing everybody? And I would always say this, If you see that people are starting to hit reply all to a group message too frequently, that might indicate it's time to call a meeting where you can talk it through and get the relevant information shared with all of the relevant parties rather than email ping pong going across the entire organization. Now, speaking of this, I know that this is a bit of a heated little thing, this reply-all thing. Um, did you know you can stop it dead in its tracks? It's super easy. All you need to do if you're about to send out to a large group to distribution list, put your name and email in the To field, put all other recipients in the BCC field. That way, if somebody decides to hit reply all, it only goes back to the names in the to or the CC field, not everyone. And if you want to be really snarky, don't put your name and email in the to field, put your favorite coworker's name and email in the to field. That's funny. All right. This might be one to consider sharing with as many people as you possibly can, please, and thank you. Stop reply all insanity. And by the way, as I said, this is a series. This is the 4th video. I'm planning to make more of these email etiquette videos. I'll give you a quick little, um, free group training tip that you could consider with these videos. If you watch one of these videos and you think what I'm saying is something you somewhat to totally agree with, You could play this video in your next staff, or group, or team, or project meeting. And then say, okay, this is what this guy said. What do you guys think? Do we agree? Should we adopt this? Should we modify and change it so it fits our culture a little bit better? But at least you can open up and have the communication. So you're not all driving each other crazy with all of these unnecessary scary emails. Give it a try, see what happens. Hope you like this one. Watch for the next one coming soon. Bye now.