8 ways to avoid drowning in reply-all emails

From delaying outgoing emails to a ban on reply-all communications, organizations are finding ways to crack down.

Some 40,000 students got his hi-Mom-check-this-out message, launching a round of emailed jokes and complaints. The goof was so massive, it drew articles in media as distant as the U.K. (Note: It wasn’t all his fault. More on that later.)

The NYU situation isn’t unique. Employees and others in all sorts of organizations are increasingly distracted by reply-all messages, and those organizations are cracking down, whether through education or by banning the practice outright.

The movement got a nod in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, which calls the reply-all button “among the most misused—and reviled—pieces of office technology.”

Interruptions for unnecessary emails sap productivity, says Jonathan B. Spira, CEO at Baxex and author of “Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous To Your Organization.”

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