18- Email productivity: 4 tips for managing your inbox
Do you find it difficult to manage you email? Throughout my childhood, I was fortunate enough to travel with my parents to various places where I met other kids my own age. As a classic “Type A,” I wanted to keep in touch with these new friends and hear about their lives, schooling, and hobbies. Unfortunately, the internet was not yet available to the average American household and long distance telephone rates were as high as 30 cents per minute for out of state calls. In comparison, a US postage stamp only cost 22 cents. With my very small allowance, the only way to keep in touch (or K.I.T. as we used to say) was to write letters and mail them. The two people involved in this classic way of cheap long-distance communication were referred to as “penpals.” I had several penpals and would often look forward to going to the mailbox to see if a letter was waiting for me. When I received a letter, I would read it and start drafting my reply right way. However, sometimes it took me several days to write the perfect reply. Then I had to find an envelope and ask one of my parents to take me to the post office for a stamp. The entire reply process averaged a week. When I compare this to the reply time for an email in my in-box, I am astonished at how far technology has come. We now have near-instant access to new letters in the form of email, and can reply as quickly as we can type (or dictate) and click the send button. People are no longer willing to wait a week or more for a return letter. They want feedback immediately.
Although many positive things have come from the availability of email communication, one drawback is that you can easily have more emails than you have time to process. Use the tips below to efficiently manage your in-box and minimize stress caused by seeing too many unread message notifications on your screen.
Tip 1: Schedule your email
How often have you stopped your current task to look at your email when the familiar “ding” sounds from your screen? Does this scene sound familiar to you? Many of us believe that we are good at multitasking, but the reality is that you can only focus on one task at a time. Many studies have proven that it is extremely improbable that you are able to multitask and not lose productivity. For example, if you are engaged in writing a report and stop to read an email, you might lose a half a minute of productivity when you first look at the email and another half when you go back to writing the report. According to a recent study, the average businessperson will receive an average of 122 emails daily in 2015. Suppose all of the emails are received on a continual basis over an eight-hour day, you would see approximately 15 emails per hour. For every email, it may take you one minute to open and read the email. This does not consider the time it might take for you to process to the email. If you allow yourself to be distracted by the “ding,” you run the risk of losing 15 minutes of every working hour of your day. Instead of trying to multitask, schedule a time to check your email. For example, if you only check your email every two hours you might be able to read 30 emails in ten minutes and then get back to the task you were working on with less lost time. Although there is no set schedule that works for everyone, I recommend checking your email only once per three hours to start. If you find that you are unable to respond in a timely manner to your clients and/or co-workers, change the schedule to once per two hours, and continue to decrease the time increment as appropriate. You’ll save time starting and stopping active tasks and be able to better focus on important tasks.
Tip 2: Invoke the 2 minute rule
This tip, taken from David Allen, is simple: If you can respond to or delegate an email in 2 minutes or less, do it. Too often, we wait one of two days before fully processing our email because it is not an urgent need. However, unless someone else controls your inbox, an unprocessed email will remain until you take action on it. Simply looking at the number of unanswered emails can create stress.
Instead, make an agreement with yourself that you will use the 2 minute rule. If you can’t process the email in two minutes, flag it and save for a later time. The advantage to using this rule is that you will empty your inbox of emails that are quick to respond to and you will have time to focus on other emails uninterrupted because you’ve already scheduled it according to Tip 1!
Tip 3: Empty your inbox every 24 hours
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” — Leonardo da Vinci
Processing your email should be simple. I strive to have an empty inbox at the end of every day. There is something satisfying to see “0 unread messages” at the top of the screen. To keep this system working I use a method modified from Michael Hyatt. The only folders I use on a daily basis are: Inbox, Processed, and Trash. When an email is addressed but needs to be saved, I move it from Inbox to Processed. If it doesn’t need to be saved I move it to the Trash folder. Using this method, I know which emails need to be touched each time I open my inbox and I am not overwhelmed because I only see a handful of emails. More importantly, I can quickly jump in and start answering them.
If you work in a job that you need to keep copies of emails related to specific clients or projects you can set up separate folders for each one. Then schedule a time, say once a month, to move all related emails to these folders. Simply search for the key word(s) in the client or project name to find the emails, then select, and move. As an added bonus, this makes the archiving process fast and easy.
Tip 4: Unsubscribe as often as possible
How often do you open an email only to wonder how you ever got on the list? Even spam takes time for your brain to process and to recognize it. Your time is valuable; be sure that each email in your inbox deserves your attention. If you find that you are consistently receiving emails from the same person or group that you don’t read, you should unsubscribe from them to minimize clutter in your inbox. If that action is too drastic for you, or you occasionally want that coupon for Bed Bath and Beyond, set up a rule that any email from a certain sender gets automatically pushed to a folder other than your inbox. Then you can save the emails to read later and prevent them from congesting your inbox.
It is easy to get overwhelmed with email. Unlike previous generations, the modern businessperson has access to instant communication through email and they are not willing to wait a few days for a reply letter. If you are not careful, the amount of email you receive can become a significant stressor. Use one or all four of the tips above to manage your email efficiently and reduce stress.
What are your tips for managing email?
