Let me say this. I don’t agree with the article I’m about to point you to. The quick summary of it is that it says you should cope with your emails by emailing people back with stock responses that effectively say you’ll get to them later.

I think this is bad for several reasons:

• I abhor stock responses – I’m a writer, I don’t do stock responses
• It means you are staying on email just to send these
• When you email these people back immediately, they are likely to respond right away
• It just adds to the number of bleedin’ emails flying around. And I like emails

Instead, I would offer that the solution to not being overwhelmed by email, to not losing your working day to writing replies, is to not check email every minute. Do it once an hour at most. Then when you get an email, if you can handle it right away, handle it right away. No postponement, just get on with it. If you can’t and you must respond, then, okay, send them a reply saying that you’re on the case. But don’t make it a stock, canned, cookie-cutter response.

The always excellent 99U site takes the opposite view and says stock, can, cookie is the way to go. See what you think – and if you agree with 99U, you’ll find such recommended stock cans in the article.