StressLess email
Time management and Email
Tired of being a slave to your inbox?
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Tired of feeling bombarded by the never ending onslaught of emails?
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Tired of the uncontrollable volume of emails waiting for attention in your inbox?
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Tired of being stressed all weekend knowing your inbox is waiting, full of emails, for you on Monday morning.
Who wouldn’t want to be more productive at work whilst gaining a sense of satisfaction at knowing that your inbox and your conscience is clear. Get control of your inbox and at the same time your working and in extreme cases, home life.
Email interrupts continuity in our thought process and steals productivity. A full inbox perpetuates a feeling of being overwhelmed and snowed under by email. Effective time management techniques enable you to achieve more and be happier in the process. Email can stand as a barrier to this. Gaining control of your email is a vital component of effective time management.
The following tips can create a habit forming process for dealing with email quickly and efficiently.
Handle email once only
Eliminate the term “check my email” from your vocabulary. What does it mean? Are you checking to see if it still there? It will be. It always will be because you do nothing but “check it”. It takes 2-3 minutes to check an email, read it, mark it as unread and then return to and focus on your current task. Every email you receive should only ever be handled once. Every time an email is opened, read and then flagged for actioning later you waste time. Think about it. You need to re-read it later. The often loved MS Outlook tools of flagging and marking emails as unread are time wasting devices. Never use them.
Action Email rather than read it
Email should only be dealt with in a way that it is then finished with. Nothing wastes time more than double handling. Stick to these 4 actions for dealing with every email:
- Read it and delete it – many emails are not needed for future reference. Learn to love, instead of fear, the delete key. If you know that you should reply to an email but most probably will not, delete it.
- Read it and file it – For those emails that you may (read: probably not) need to refer to again.
- Read it and action it – Only if the action can be completed in 2 minutes or less.
- Read it and commit it to time – By associating time to a task it is more likely to get done. Emails that sit in your inbox waiting to be done are a huge burden hanging over your head.
Set a time for email
Set designated times to go into email to action it and stick to these times. This may be as much as once every hour or as little as twice a day. Train your colleagues that this is the way you operate and soon they will be coming to you for help with their poor email habits.
“I check email only four times a day. It's far more efficient to answer your emails in bulk. You wouldn't do a load of washing each time you have a dirty sock. A good idea is to have an auto-reply that tells everyone you only check email periodically. This will train colleagues into your way of operating.”
Dale Beaumont, Managing director of Secrets Exposed
publisher of motivational career books, and Mega Success Club
Know your high productivity times
Most emails can be actioned with very little need to be creative, thoughtful and insightful. Why waste your most productive hours actioning email? Everyone works more productively at different times of the day. Know when you are at your least productive during the day and schedule the actioning of email at these times.
Turn off the email notification
Remember we are only going into email on our terms to action it. We do not want an uninvited interruption and distraction.
“I go to email; it doesn't come to me.It's the only way to work with technology - to have it always available when you're ready to use it, but not beeping at you for attention. I've disabled all email alerts so they don't distract me as they roll in.”
Todd Sampson, Managing director of ad agency
Leo Burnett, panellist on ABC-TV's The Gruen Transfer
Email is not a retreat
Many times people will pause in their work and use that time to “check” their email. Dr Thomas Jackson, Loughborough University, England found that it takes an average of 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after interruption by email. So people who check their email every 5 minutes waste 8.5 hours a week figuring out what they were doing moments before. Pause by closing your eyes instead. You will recover faster and be more productive.
Know when to end an email stream
Do not feel the need to carry on the replies. Email does not have to be acknowledged. Don’t get into a (((( reciprocal hugging )))) type arrangement with email. If the issue has been resolved leave it there.
Use Filters
Learn to use the filters that are a feature of most email programs to help you action your email. Why do the work when the computer can. Use filters to file, delete, forward and reply to email wherever possible.
Ian Fraser’s presentation style is very engaging, informative and importantly entertaining. His insights on actioning email are both compelling and practical, allowing you to spend your precious time doing what you want, when you want.
If you would like Ian Fraser to present his techniques and tips on controlling email at your organisation please contact us.
Target Audience
Anyone wishing to improve their effectiveness with handling emal.
Presentation Duration
1 hour |
