1. Set a limited number times each day to review email, and unless you are expecting a CRITICAL email, do not look in your inbox at other times (and turn off the sound chime).
2. Learn to use the “rules” that are available in your email program. If your boss sends you email, have it diverted to the “Employer” folder, and then look at this folder first when you begin processing your email.
3. Are there some people who should *not* be sending you emails?  Divert their emails to your “Junk” folder. You might look at it someday . . . or you might not.
4. Do everything you can to avoid personal email at work. You know you’re not supposed to do it. You know that these emails sometimes go to the wrong people. You know this is bad.
5. Proofread your emails, spell check them, and email make sure you’re sending them to the right person. Untold chaos can result from sending an unclear email to the wrong person. (Even worse – sending a very clear email to the wrong person.)

The idea is to become aware of email stealing your time and energy. 

Be sure to check out the 7 Sane & Sensible Email Practices package for additional tips and techniques to keep email chaos at bay.

1. Never send or forward “chain letter” email. You’ll still have friends and good things will still happen to you. As soon as you can tell that it’s “one of those,” hit delete.
2. Don’t send “bounce-back” emails (thanking someone for thanking you).
3. Learn to use the subject line as the complete email. End the subject line with which stands for “End of Message.” For example, send an email like this: “Office Meeting Time Changed to 8:30 a.m. .” No one has to open this email, they just read, take note, and delete.
4. Learn to use email folders. Usually it’s just a right click on your email inbox to create a folder (or ask your “help” program). As soon as you’ve processed an email and determined that you MUST save it, slide it into the appropriate email folder. For example, if you receive a confirmation of an airline reservation, once you’ve opened it and noted the times and flights are correct, put it in the “Travel Confirmation” folder that you’ve created. Depending on the type of business you do, you might have many email folders, but more than a screen-full is too many.
5. Set a goal to process everything in your email inbox EVERY day. Move items to folders or delete. Remember that you can usually retrieve things from your “Deleted” items for at least a few weeks depending on your organization’s policies, so don’t be afraid to delete.The idea is to become aware of email stealing your time and energy. 

   Be sure to check out the 7 Sane & Sensible Email Practices package for additional tips and techniques to keep email chaos at bay.

    

    

    

Book Recommendations – Email

Hurst, Mark.  Bit Literacy:  Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload.

I have been buying this book in large quantities and have now used it in several workshops and have given it to many of my consulting clients.  Not only do I love the way this guy writes (he’s very smart, articulate, and clever), but I find his message, tips, and tools extremely helpful.  It doesn’t matter whether you agree with everything he says or not…you will think about your email differently and you might even empty your email in-box.  Woo-hoo!                                                                             

For additional email tips & techniques, check out the learning package 7 Sane & Sensible Email Practices

Are you kidding me? How could I not buy this book? And, I loved it even though I disagreed with portions of it. I gained a number of very useable ideas and appreciate the author’s irreverent style. He is pushing hard to try to make his point because if he tip-toed around it, most of us wouldn’t get it. By pushing so hard (beyond what I am comfortable with, anyway), I got part of his points, which may have been his point after all. Worth reading.             

         

 For additional email tips & techniques, check out the learning package 7 Sane & Sensible Email Practices.

• Go to your main Inbox.  You may only have a few items in there, so you can ignore this, but others reading this have hundreds or thousands of items in the main Inbox (not sorted into folders, just sitting there). This situation is overwhelming, inefficient, and chaotic in the same way that having hundreds or thousands of pieces of paper and other items on your desk is overwhelming, inefficient, and chaotic. So recognize that fact.
  
• Next, line up your main Inbox by date, just as you should the Deleted Items and the Sent Items (see previous post).
  
• If the email is more than 6 months old, delete it completely (highlight and hold down the Shift key).
  
• Depending on your situation, you may be amazed at the hundreds or thousands of emails you have just deleted. And guess what, the world is still spinning on its axis!
  
• Recognize that this is just the beginning of getting your email chaos at bay–and be proud of yourself for starting!

Be sure to check out the 7 Sane & Sensible Email Practices package for additional tips and techniques to keep email chaos at bay.

1. Email
2. Telephone
3. Drop-in visitors
4. Procrastination
5. Self-distraction
6. Filing systems that aren’t
7. Energy suckers (which might include gossip or other negative and non-productive interactions)
8. Slow or inefficient reading
9. Junk mail
10. Re-thinking, i.e., churning through the same idea over and over and over.
11. Social media (I sure love it, but…whew…my time can sure get ‘taken’ (or really, I’m just giving it away!)

There are others that you might notice, too. The idea is just to become aware of what might be stealing your time and energy. 

Also, consider this teleseminar (which is available as an MP3 along with extensive handouts) to help with time thieves: http://meggin.com/ATPAvailabletoPromise.php

• Understand that “cleaning up/clearing out” time needs to be set aside, in the same way that you set aside time to “clean up/clear out” your office.
  
• Look in your calendar now and set aside some time–later today, then again tomorrow, and then again the next day, at least.
  
• I want you to do one thing RIGHT NOW, though. Print out this email so that you can more easily follow the instructions I’m giving you…. Now you will be ready for your next session, where you will do the following:
  
• Start with the “Deleted Items” folder. Click on it and see how many are in there. Usually the number shows somewhere on the screen. Take note of it. Then, click at the top of the column so that the emails are arranged by “date” or “received”. If you have 1000s of items in Deleted, then AT LEAST start by deleting anything that is more than 6 months old. Here’s how to do that easily: Just start with the date that is 6 months prior to when you are reading this and click on the first one, hold down your Shift key, hit Page Down, and you will start highlighting screen-fulls of old email. Every few screen-fulls, hit Delete and you will permanently delete these.
  
• After you are down to only 6 months’ worth in your Deleted Items, then go to Sent Items, and line them up the same way, i.e., by date. Start with 6 months ago, highlight them, and when you hit the Delete key, hold down the Shift key so that they are permanently deleted. Otherwise, you are just moving them from Sent Items to Deleted Items.

Be sure to check out the 7 Sane & Sensible Email Practices package for more ideas to keep your email under control.

1. Open your email a specified number of times each day (vs. having it on constantly). Even if you open it once an hour, that’s an improvement over having it on 100% of the time.
   
2. Only open if you have time to process/deal with the email that is there.
   
3. Set up and use all the “rules” you possibly can to sift & sort your email. If you don’t know how to do this with your program (Outlook, Eudora, or some other), then ask someone who does. Each little tip you can use makes a difference.
   
4. Use a clear, pertinent, succinct subject line (and this may be the whole message). For example: “Meeting Tuesday afternoon is canceled.” If this is indeed the entire message, then put EOM which means End of Message to let the reader know they don’t even have to open the email.
   
5. Use and teach others to use NNTR (No Need to Respond) or NRN (No Response Necessary).

Be sure to check out the 7 Sane & Sensible Email Practices package.

Morgenstern originally published this book under the title: Making Work Work, and then realized that the provocative phrase “Never Check Email in the Morning” would make her book fly off the shelves. It should fly off the shelf and right into your hands because if you want to be more productive, then I promise you will find ideas within the covers of this book that you can use immediately. She presents workable ideas for meetings, delegating, planning your day, handling paperwork, and more. It’s paperback, inexpensive, and worth getting and reading today!

For additional email tips & techniques, check out the learning package 7 Sane & Sensible Email Practices

I am not sure what your email backlog is, but here are two possibilities:

• Unread emails which show up as “bold” to indicate they are all unread.
• Emails that are all “read” but you haven’t processed them.

This post is to give you specific ideas for dealing with the more current backlog of emails in your inbox. For some of you, the backlog is a month or less. Whatever it is, consider implemeting the following:

1.  Set aside a specific amount of time each day to deal with processing–and with gradually eliminating the “backlog.” If you have a timer on your computer, your watch, or your PDA (Palm or some other type), set the timer for 30 minutes and devote those thirty minutes to dealing with your email and eliminating the backlog.  If your timer goes off and you are making good progress and feel like continuing, then do so.

2.  Think about your email backlog the same way you consider dealing with a paper backlog….start with the most recent first and work backward. Just like you probably have boxes of papers, or file folders full of papers that you could start sorting and processing, you are better off using your time to deal well with the newer paper that is coming into your office. Same with your email. Start with the most recent and work backwards.

3.  During your processing time, click on your email and sort your messages so that they are in date order, and deal with the most recent one first. And deal with it. Here’s what “deal with it” means:

1. Delete it. Delete it if it is trash, has nothing to do with you, is a waste of time, or is a duplicate of information you already have or could get elsewhere.
2. Delegate it. Forward it if someone else needs the information, task, or responsibility (and you don’t).
3. Handle it (right now). If you can handle this email in two minutes or less, then answer it, do it, make the phone call, put the information in your planner….whatever the action that is required.
4. File it for action. File it for later action if you cannot do the task now because you don’t have the time or don’t have the information. You can file it in several ways. You can print out the email and put it in your “tickler/1-31 file” or you can put the email into an email “folder” you create that indicates that the items in it need action. I have an email folder labeled “ASAR” which means, As Soon As Reasonable. I don’t put anything in that email folder unless it requires my action. I also change the subject line of the emails I put in there so that it say what the action is.
5. File it for reference. If the email is something that you will need later on for one reason or another, and the information is not going to be available anywhere else, then file it. For example, if you get an email that confirms receipt of a form you turned in, and you want to have that as “proof” just in case, then either print out the email and file it in a physical form, or file it in digital format (within your email program or somewhere else on your computer). I have an email folder called “Orders Expected” and that’s where email confirmations of orders I’ve placed would go.

Please sit at your computer and start on the most recent emails you have and make progress through them in this way. You will get more and more efficient on your processing until you get to a point of burning through 60 – 80 emails in an hour….or maybe even faster if fewer of them require action.

If these ideas are helpful, put them into practice today! Set aside email processing time everyday and set as a goal to process a little more email everyday than you receive–and before you know it, you will have eliminated the backlog.

For MANY more Sane & Sensible Email Practices. check out this resource.