MANAGING YOUR E-MAIL
Hint: Read your inbox only once!
By JUDI CRAIG
We know that e-mail is supposed to help us save time and be more efficient. Problem is, e-mail can turn into a monster that makes us feel frustrated and overwhelmed.
Take the following common scenario: You open your e-mail program and see an assortment of message subject lines. You look at one and think, “I know what that’s about, but I can’t reply now,” and you move on to look at the next one. Maybe it’s obvious spam, so you delete it. The next is from your mother, so you think, “It can wait — I’ll read it later.” You continue, maybe actually reading one or two, maybe answering one that is a “quickie,” but when you click out of your e-mail, you’ve left quite a few messages in your inbox.
With this approach, your e-mail inbox builds during the day. And every single time you go back to it, you’ve got to reread (at least partially) each entry and redecide whether to respond or to save it. With this strategy, you easily can end up with an inbox with over 100 messages (or two-or-three-hundred) messages! Sound familiar?
To resolve this struggle, decide that you’re only going to read each entry in your inbox once. To do this, you have to think of your e-mail as a virtual filing cabinet,
creating a group of files that you can easily send messages to if you can’t deal with them the first time they appear.
For example, you might have a file for your boss or, if you are the boss, files for each of your direct reports or employees. You can create files for each meeting or organization you typically attend, such as “Staff Meeting” or “Association for ________.” You might have a “Continuing Education” file or a “Reference” file (for a list of restaurants and their phone numbers for ordering take-out, a list of your co-workers’ or employees’ addresses and phone numbers, your son’s soccer schedule, etc.)
And you can create nonbusiness files if you like, perhaps a “Personal” file or even a “Joke” file.
A couple of files that are real timesavers are a “To Read” file and a “Waiting For” file. Any articles you receive — or anything else you want to read when you have the time — send to the “To Read” file. Then the next time you’re going on an airplane, going for a doctor’s visit where you know you’ll have to wait, or maybe just planning an evening of reading, print out some items from your “To Read” file and have them handy in your briefcase.
The “Waiting For” file is a wonderful way to keep from letting things “fall between the cracks” as well as giving you the satisfaction of feeling on top of things when you leave your office every day. Here’s how you do it: Whenever you make a request of someone else, you blind carbon copy yourself. When the email comes back to you, you simply send it to your “Waiting For” file.
Then, before you leave your office for the day, you pull up your “Waiting For” file. As you quickly review what’s in it, it gives you an overview of all those things you’re waiting for. One or two may jump out at you because you realize that you need the information soon, signaling you to either e-mail the person again or give him or her a call. And, of course, you can quickly delete any item that you’ve already received, keeping your file current.
The idea is that when you look at your inbox, you either respond or delete it right away — or you send it to one of your files so that it can be more easily managed when you choose to deal with it later. With this process, you’re no longer spending wasted time re-reading your inbox and you’ve created a beautifully organized system where you can find what you want when you want it. Now here are a few other tips for e-mail management:
Turn off any sound or flashing sign that “you’ve got mail” on your computer. These only interrupt you. Instead, two or three times a day when you will check your e-mail and respond to messages at those times.
Don’t clutter other people’s inbox by always hitting “reply all”; use that feature only when absolutely necessary. Also, create a “NTN” policy (No Thanks Needed) for internal e-mail. When you send something to someone in your own place of employment, add “NTN” (or have it understood as a policy) that thereno need to say “Thanks, I got it” when someone replies to you. All those “thank yous” can add up to lots of wasted time for the person who has to delete them. Finally, don’t send an e-mail when you are upset; you might say things that you’ll regret after you’ve had time to calm down
and think things through. Besides, if there’s some type of conflict involved, it’s far better to address those issues in person rather than send a more impersonal —
and more easily misunderstood — e-mail.
Judi Craig, Ph.D., MCC, is an executive
coach in San Antonio. She is president
of COACH SQUARED, Inc.
(www.coachsquared.com) and a senior
practice advisor with Atticus, Inc.
back to top
