Honest email auto-replies you can use during these challenging times

[Image description: A laptop, opened and sitting on a wooden table, next to a black phone. The laptop’s display is covered with pieces of paper in various colors. Image by geralt on Pixabay]

Hi everyone. The past few months have been ridiculous. If you’ve emailed me, you literally got this auto-response back:

“Hi. This is an automatic reply. Due to parenting and homeschooling two small children, I will be slow to respond to emails. And I’ll be honest, I may forget to respond completely. If something is urgent, please call or text me. Thank you. Vu.”

This has actually been extremely helpful to have in place, as folks have been a lot more understanding when they hear from me three months after they email. Things are not normal. We all need to be a little more honest with one another in our communications. With that in mind, here are some auto-responses I drafted to serve as inspiration for you all. Feel free to adapt them to suit your needs:

Continue reading “Honest email auto-replies you can use during these challenging times”

We need to change our unhealthy attitude about email before civilization collapses

[Image description: Someone sitting at a wooden desk holding an iPhone. on the desk is an open laptop. The image is only focused on the hands, which have purplish nail polish and a golden ring each, and gadgets. Image by William Iven of Unsplash.com]
If you are like me, your email inbox is an overflowing compost pile of festering guilt and existential despair. I get between 150 to 200 emails per day. Sure, half of them are stupid (although, can we really call a discussion thread focused on Netflix’ breathtaking animated series Castlevania stupid?) But that still leaves 75 to 100 messages that actually need a response or some type of action. It’s impossible to get through all of them. Then they multiply, including the “Did you get my last email?” and “Hey, just following up on the email I sent last week” and “The team noticed you’ve been tearing out your hair and cussing a lot lately when opening your laptop. Are you OK?”

No, I’m not OK. You’re not OK! None of us are OK, OK?! Email is out of control! It’s horrible yet addictive yet efficient yet awful! All of us are looking for ways to manage the murky cesspool that is our emails. If you google “email overwhelm,” it’ll come up with 481,000 hits, including hundreds of articles with advice like “only check your emails at designated time” and “create filters to automatically file many messages” and “do what Jeff Bezos does” (Start a multi-billion dollar tech company and hire people to answer your emails). Continue reading “We need to change our unhealthy attitude about email before civilization collapses”

12 types of people who get on everyone’s nerves in nonprofit

cake-916253_640pdHi everyone, this Thursday (3/12) is my birthday, and I’m going to use it as an opportunity to shamelessly promote my organization, Rainier Valley Corps, which is trying to bring more leaders of color into the sector while supporting existing leaders. We are a nine-month-old start-up nonprofit that takes nothing for granted; we wept with joy upon finding a working dry-erase marker last week, and I’ve been sneaking into conferences to stock up on pens. If you like this blog, please consider investing in RVC’s work with a donation based on how old you think I am. That’s right, if you think I’m 45, give $45. If you think I’m 36 and a half, give $36.50. If you think I’m 86, why…you genius, that’s exactly how old I am! (And I won’t be offended if you think I’m 1,000 or 5,000 years old).

Also, because it’s my birthday this week, I am going to take a break from serious topics like equity or capacity building or performance reviews, and instead start an annual tradition of poorly-edited ranting about people in the sector who get on everyone’s nerves. Look, we have an awesome field full of smart, very good-looking, and extremely humble people. Still, there is room for improvement. If you are one of these people below, please change your ways before I form a shadow organization that will hunt you down and bring you to justice: Continue reading “12 types of people who get on everyone’s nerves in nonprofit”