First off, let me explain to the uninitiated exactly what a dingleberry is, and no, he’s not the weird guy who waits for the bus wearing black socks with sandals and likes to talk about his pet iguana. According to the illustrious source, UrbanDictionary.com, a dingleberry is “a delinquent partial turd, which grasps anal shrubbery causing brownish crust to accumulate in ones boxers.” Juicy.
Now that you’ve had your slang refresher you can understand why I use the term dingleberry to describe those last annoying emails that never seem to go away. You know the messages I’m talking about, those that offer totally unnecessary information such as “Thanks,” “Is that cool?” and my personal favorite, “Okay.”
The dingleberry email scenario usually goes something like this:
1. You send an email requesting feedback, confirmation, or information.
2. You receive an email reply stating they will “get right on it.”
3. You send a follow-up email with the vital message, “Thanks!”
4. You receive an email response stating, “No problem.”
Four emails and you still don’t have the information you need! What a waste of time, let alone focus and energy. That telltale ding heralding the arrival of a new super-important email is an irresistible distraction that cuts in to precious work time. How the hell are you supposed to be a genius, rock star, Toilet Paper Entrepreneur (TPE) if you’re constantly responding to useless emails?
Dingleberries put a major dent in the cash pile, too. According to the NY Times, more than $650 billion is lost every year in the United States due to unnecessary interruptions like email. Um…hello? Billions? Hundreds of billions? Are you paying attention yet?
NO MORE DINGLEBERRIES!
Just ask time taskmaster Tim Ferris, author of The 4-Hour Workweek. He’ll tell you the low-down dirty truth about your inbox.
“E-mail (and all of its Crackberry/digital leash/Twitter cousins) is the largest single interruption in modern life. In a digital world, creating time therefore hinges on minimizing e-mail,” states Tim in one of his lifestyle design blog posts.
Tim offers some fantastic advice for the email-addicts of the world – yes, I do mean you – and how to successfully run your career or business while only checking email once or twice a day. It’s good stuff. Check it out.
But you don’t have to conduct extensive time saving research to cut down on the dingleberries immediately. Here are my top three dingleberry-proof tips:
1. Who Cares? – Before you send ANY email, ask yourself if anyone really needs the email you’re sending. I mean, who really cares to know that you don’t have time to provide an in-depth response at the moment? Just send the damn email when you DO have time.
2. WTF? Shut Up! – If your email consists of an acronym and a signature line, don’t hit send. There is absolutely no vital information encoded in all of those cute capital letters, just mindless banter that adds up to a whole heap of wasted time. LOL
3. Ever Heard of a Telephone? – Some discussions are just better over the phone or in person. If you’ve exchanged over a dozen emails just to get your point across and still don’t have the key piece of information you need, pick up the phone! Sure, a phone call is also an interruption, but if you can take care of the issue in two minutes versus twenty emails, you’ve just saved a TON of time.
Hang on to those resources, TPE. Time is money. Write it down: No More Dingleberries!
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