Work smarter; manage your email
Posted on January 16, 2008
Filed Under Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y
Do you manage your email or does your email manage you? The truth may surprise you. If you check your email more than 3 times a day, chances are email is managing you. Ask yourself how much more you could accomplish if you didn’t check your email at every opportunity or heaven forbid everytime Outlook notified you that you have a new email. Is your inbox really filled with that much important information?
Managing your email is one of the quickest and easiest ways to cut your work down from 8 hours a day to much less and it’s simpler than you might think. The key is to ween the people who email you off of you. To do that try these 3 simple steps:
1. Start checking your email only 4 times a day; first thing in the morning, before lunch, after lunch, and an hour before you quit for the day. That’s it, no cheating. It will be hard at first, but really, if you’re answering email four times a day you’re doing more than enough to meet the needs of those contacting you. When I come back from vacation or an extended business trip, I first sort my email by sender, this allows me to quickly mass delete all spam and unnecessary email. If you get email by the bushel try this on a daily basis, it works.
2. Once you get comfortable with the 4 x a day rule cut it to 3. I recommend cutting out the after lunch habit. If this makes you nervous, good, it should, but stick with it. If you’re really concerned about people being able to get a hold of you, turn on your ‘out of office’ message. Inform senders that you are in the office, but only checking email 3x a day. Instruct them that if they have an urgent need, they may contact you via phone. I don’t recommend turning on your ‘out of office’, but do so if it makes you feel better.
3. Repeat step 2 only now cut your email checking to 2x a day and cut out the first thing in the morning check. Make it wait until close to lunch time. At this stage feel free to turn on your ‘out of office’, but tailor the message that you are checking your email only 2x a day to serve them better, etc.
If you can get to step three you can cut at least 2 hours off your work day, probably much more and you’ll be well on your way to being a more effective and productive performer.
Final thought; if you’ve started reading The 4 Hour Work Week, you may see that stole this idea from Tim Ferriss’ book. If you haven’t, don’t stress, I’ll be passing on more of Mr Ferriss’ wisdom in the coming weeks.
Until next time…
[tags] email, work smarter, work/life balance
Are there any methods for getting from 100 times a day to maybe 20?
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