Avoid "Urgent" or "High Priority" Subjects and Symbols

There are certainly good reasons to send out messages with the “high priority” status (you know, that little red exclamation point in the left column of your inbox) set in Outlook. Disasters, natural or otherwise, come to mind. If you’re sending me an order to evacuate the building, please send it to me high priority. If the office is going to be closed because of snow, send me a message with the little red exclamation point so I notice before I leave home in the morning. If my automatic deposit isn’t going to happen on time, please alert me so I don’t go nuts with my ATM card.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the messages that go out as “urgent” or “high priority” are anything but. Don’t believe me? Here’s an honest-to-goodness list of “high priority” items that showed up in my inbox in a month-long period:

A notice about a reception for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Attorneys

Several requests for information about who would be out of the office each week

Information about a ten percent discount on symphony tickets

A notification that a representative of a cell phone company would be on site

Information about a book club in another office

Requests for information about birthdays and anniversary celebrations

An announcement about staff appreciation week

A notice about a lost “womens” earring

A notice about a found pair of men’s pants

While all of that information may have been important to someone (particularly the poor guy who lost his pants) and some of it may have been important enough to send to an entire office or even to the whole firm, none of it seems so crucial that it needs to go out as “high priority.” The problem here isn’t just that some people seem to have no grasp of what’s truly critical. After a while it’s hard to tell what’s important on the receiving end as well. It as though you get several messages with the subject “Wolf!” every day. Eventually you just stop paying attention to them. And as bad as it is to be on the receiving end of self-important messages, it’s even worse if you’re one of the offenders in the habit of sending out mundane messages as “high priority.” Chances are that your readers are ignoring your messages as best they can. They may have started to resent it every time they see your name in their inbox.

It might seem hard to believe, but I’ve run across more than one person-- and not just lawyers-- who send every single message as high priority. And the problem keeps cropping up, despite the fact that my firm has gone so far as to counsel individual offenders and send repeated notices to the whole firm about the danger of using the urgent designation. You might be wondering why it’s such a big deal. Isn’t it just a little red exclamation point? But this is literally an issue that keeps people up at night. Many of us who are on call, provide user support, or otherwise need to be kept up to date when problems crop up have Blackberrys or other devices vibrate, beep, or play “Eye of the Tiger” every time they receive a “high priority” message. This can be shocking, annoying, or embarrassing when it happens on your nightstand at 3:00 am. So show a little compassion and refrain from marking your message as urgent whenever possible.