Over 100 billion e-mails rocket through cyberspace everyday. Sometimes it feels like half of those are addressed to us personally. With over 90% of all business correspondence conducted over e-mail, and workers citing e-mail overload as one of their top five gripes of the workplace, it's no wonder companies today are scrambling for a solution.

While experts, authors, and bloggers have offered their varying opinions on how to make e-mail more efficient, the truth is: e-mail doesn't need to be more efficient. Creating better folder names or learning how to delegate, delete, and defer is not the solution. Simply put, email needs to be more effective, not more efficient.

Trying to manage the deluge of requests, invites, to-dos, advice, and SPAM in our inbox is like trying not to eat the entire package of Oreos once it's been spotted in the cupboard. It's too late. The battle needs to be won at the grocery store. Put healthy food in our cart and smarter eating decisions can be made at home. Similarly in e-mail, we need to win the battle before the send button is clicked, not after. Managing our bulging inboxes is addressing the symptom, not the problem.

So what is the problem? E-mail has become an annoyance, a necessary evil that must be tolerated to get our work done. Things like SPAM and the misuse of Reply To All have denigrated our perception of e-mail's value to a point that we we'll do anything to make it as quick and painless as possible just to get it over with. E-mail's become a commodity brokered on handhelds, cell phones, and laptops with poor grammar, irrelevant content, and lack of professionalism as the currency

As we continue our battle with e-mal overload, there is one general premise for success. Think before the inbox. Once an e-mail hits your inbox it's too late. The damage has been done. Think about what type of e-mail your sending and how appropriate it is. I've devised the RAISE rule for this very thing.

Here is the RAISE rule:

R- Relevant: Make your communication relevant to the recipient. Do they really need to be CC'd?

A- Actionable: Make sure the recipient knows what they are suppose to do now that you've communicated with them.

I- Informative: Nothing worse than an email response in the middle of a busy day with only this word in it: "Thanks". Not that you shouldn't be appreciative, but disseminate valuable information only. Save the "Thanks" for the next email you send to that person later in the day. "Hey, thanks again for help on that project. Now I have another opportunity I'd like to discuss with you..."

S- Succinct: Keep it short. Whether in-person, on the phone or in email. Keep to the facts and don't go off on tangents.

E- Expectations understood. Is there anything else to say?