Managing your emails so they don’t manage you
Email has been a huge part of our lives now for so long and it brings so many benefits (I say that to anyone who remembers a fax machine!). However, it has also bought us some challenges and quite often, email can take over your best time management plan (even more so when you also have other social channels to check for messages too).
Yes, email on the first day back from a 2-week holiday is going to be a pain. If you don’t manage them whilst you are away, you will have to take a deep breath and go for it. However, at any other time, you should be on top of them. I have regularly seen people in corporate life use the number of emails as a badge of honour (i.e., the more you have, the ‘better’ or ‘busier’ you are) or seen random times for emails being sent (i.e., I was so busy I was still sending emails at 1am). STOP! You don’t need to. You need to look at how you use your time.
Let’s look at some ways to see if you can manage those emails instead of them managing you.
1) Allocate time in your day to check up on emails
The biggest tip I can give you is, please don’t have your emails open all day! It becomes so easy to look at the little notification button or opening message as a new email comes in. It takes your focus off the task you were doing and stops your concentration as you are likely already replying to the email in your head (despite you only seeing the sender and title line!)
Whilst it can be good to ‘keep on top of emails’ during the day (especially if you receive a lot), you need some focused time for doing it. So, best way to work is:
Check them at certain points in the day (so perhaps first thing, before lunch, mid afternoon and end of day)
Consider when you are in the right ‘mode’ to read emails (do you have a better time in the day when you are fresh enough to read/reply?)
Give yourself a limit on these check in’s.
Turn off your notifications on your emails too (remember this is about minimising distractions)
And remember to close the email down after each ‘check in’ session!
2) Use the Two Minute Rule
This is from the book ‘Getting Things Done’ by David Allen. The simple principle is – if you read it, if you can understand, reply and take action in two minutes, - then get it done! Don’t save it to reply later (even if it is a simple reply) – that’s just storing up your work.
If it is going to take longer, then diarise another time to take action as otherwise you may rush what needs to be a more considered reply.
3) Only handle it once
In a slightly different take to the previous point, (this also comes from a book,– “Extreme Productivity” (Robert C Pozen).), ‘Only Handle it Once’ simply does what it says on the tin!
The concept means if you keep double handling an email, you are just creating work. It might need a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’, or you might need to forward it to someone else. If you can’t take dealing it, keep it unread and wait till you can. Try this one out – try and only ‘touch’ an email once instead of keep opening/typing a reply/not sending/marking as unread and repeating the process!
I am not saying do that for everything as some emails need considered responses, but try it with the ones you can; read it, take action, file it and move on!
4) Only keep action required emails in your inbox
This one really worked for me and still does! Instead of having to scroll down pages and pages to look for an email from 3 weeks ago, once you have dealt with it either delete it or move to your chosen folder.
That way when you look at your inbox, you have a real handle on what is left to be actioned (honestly, it’s a wonderful feeling when there is not even a whole screen of emails!)
5) Organise your emails and folders
This one takes a little time, but it will pay dividends to you. Think about simple tricks which are there to help you. Each email provider has things in slightly different places, but all should enable you to:
Use subfolders to help you organise. It may be that you set up a folder for each client, or a folder for certain projects and as you get an email drop it directly into that folder
Use labels to make it easier. You can either colour your emails (to make them easily identifiable) or apply a label to each one (to help sort)
Consider setting up ‘inbox rules’ or ‘filters’. So you could get lots of emails confirming ‘sales made’ but you might not need to see each one, you just need to have access to them. So set up a rule which automatically detects an email with those words in and moves it to your prepared folder
Check on all of those regular ‘subscription’ emails. You might find you are getting many emails which you never read but you subscribed to an offer 3 years ago. Make this the time you review those! Just either click ‘unsubscribe’ or create a rule to move them to a ‘for info’ folder’ – it really helps with email panic by reducing numbers!
Also, if you are a reader, there are many great books which can help when it comes to time management and of course email management is a big part of that. 2 books I would love to highlight to you:
“Eat that Frog” – Brian Tracy
“Getting Things Done” – David Allen
I only recommend things that I really believe in - these are a quick and must read. They can really help you look at your complete time management concept and how you work.
We can help in a few ways if you want to take this further. We can either carry out an audit on your email way of working, we could pick up the management of some of your emails for you or we can help train in more detail on time management! All or any of this is something we would love to talk more about, so get in touch!
