I like a clean mailbox, 5 messages no more – it gives me a pristine and squeaky clean kinda feel . But that’s not always easy to get. Email is very much overused, especially at the office. Something that would take 5 minutes over the phone, may only take you 2 minutes to email, but leaves the responder with the annoying task of interpreting and answering what is often a very open-ended question. But even more often, we email when it would be much faster to call someone or walk over to their desk.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all those messages. I used to have a heap of emails weeks or months old sitting there gathering dust.
Simplify your email, simplify your day:
1.Junk or not? Some emails are easily identified as junk. Trash those immediately and first thing.
2.Action right now! Look over all your emails briefly to see if there’s anything from the boss or some other important being like that. Open those first. Then look at the others and act on each as soon as you open it. Decide if it should be trashed, filed or responded to.
3.Quick or not? Can you answer in a few sentences? Do so right away. Even if you can’t fully answer, a quick response will show you are available and on top of things. Will it take longer to respond? Label it “unread” and mark it down on your to-do list.
4.Just information? Is the email just some stuff you need to read? Mark it on your to-do list or create a “Read” folder for later review. If you have a lot of these, create 2 folders “Read today” and “Read.”
5.Resist the urge to check constantly. Check email first thing in the morning for important messages. If you have no pressing task to work on, go through the above steps. If you have something else that needs immediate attention, ignore the emails except for the urgent ones. Set aside certain hours during the day when you check email – or check it on the hour if you feel the need. But don’t constantly flip back and forth between email and your work.
6.Bonus tip! Rather than emailing, call the person, go see the person or schedule a quick meeting.
If you currently have too many emails to count, first make sure they are ordered by date. Then start with the oldest email first and apply the above techniques to make your box skinny down .
See how easy it is? Now you just need to get into the habit. And anyone can break a habit!
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September 30th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
I know that a messy email inbox can be a huge waste of time.
I am a firm believer in Gmail Filters. In fact email accounts that do not have filters I forward to Gmail so, I can set them up.
I also do the Read & answer now. I try to get those out of the way 1st.
For normal questions that seem to come in often, I have a Doc with the answers already written out. I can just copy & paste them into a reply. Of course you may want to do a little personalization but, at least you do not have to type everything out each time.
Clean out those inboxes!!
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Brian Hawkins Reply:
September 30th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Hi Sheryl, I’ve been unsubscribing like crazy lately. I can read my emails on my phone now and that has really helped. Checking and deleting every now and then at work saves me from coming home to three hundred emails.
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