Email Management
If you are able to process your email inbox each day without it disrupting your real job duties, then I consider you a modern day super hero, and you don't need to bother yourself with this Productivity Hack.
For the rest of us, here's the first of many email-related Productivity Hacks designed to help you keep a healthy relationship with your inbox.
Email doesn't scale
During the course of the workday, some people's needs naturally have a higher priority than others. For example, if my boss comes up to me and says, "Mitch, I need the updated project report by 11:00 tomorrow" then I will make sure I listen to that request and ensure I deliver the needed report on time.
However, what happens when my boss is standing in a noisy crowd of people around me and I can't hear her request? Or worse yet, what if there are so many people in the crowd that I don't even notice my boss is standing there, asking for something?
I tell you what happens: my boss is upset that I didn't deliver.
I cannot give her an excuse that I didn't see the email. As leaders, we don't work with excuses, we work with results.
Email is such an interesting communication channel. It's extremely passive, yet people automatically assume that you read all the emails they send you; like it's a virtual replacement to standing in front of you and having a conversation. That is likely a valid expectation if you only receive a small number of emails from a few differnet senders. But what about when you have 50, 100, 200 or more senders per day?
The reality is that email as a communication tool does not scale.
Searching google for "email productivity" returns only 113,000,000 results. Obviously this is a common problem that nearly everyone suffers from.
So what are we to do? Shall we forget about our day-to-day work and only focus on managing our email inboxes? Obviously not.
So what are some techniques that we can use to act on important email and maximize the rest of our time to get real work done?
4 Tips to Immediately Improve Your Inbox Life
1. Notify all of your key stakeholders that email is not a reliable way to reach you
The very first thing you must do is to inform your key stakeholders that currently you are experiencing a high inflow of email and if there is something urgent they need from you they should contact you via an alternate communication channel (such as SMS, instant message, phone call, etc).
Educating your colleagues that email is not the perfect medium for all communication needs is a slow process but there is no better time to start than today.
2. Choose the time and the place (to battle your inbox)
If you let it, your inbox will distract you every chance it gets.
Do not let it.
Disable all sounds, notifications, vibrations, etc. that automatically disturb you when you get a new message. Better yet, turn off the mail on your phone or put your computer's mail application in "Offline Mode" until you're ready to deal with it. These sneaky notifications will rob you of your focus, and therefore your productivity.
3. Not all email is created equal
All modern email applications that I know of allow you to create mail rules. These rules trigger actions based on certain email criteria. One example could be to mark all email sent from your mother's email address as high priority, or to automatically move advertisement email to the trash folder. The details for how to create a rule will depend on the email application that you use. If you're unsure how to do this, google is your best friend.
Before you actually create your first email rule, make a list of 2 to 5 people that you consider 'high priority senders'. When I say 'high priority' I mean just that. For example, email from your boss that likely needs an immediate response, or perhaps email from your lawyer that is critical to a deal you're working on. Whomever you consider high priority, keep the list as short as you can. You will periodically review this list and add/remove people as necessary. In my case, I have three people designated as high priority senders: my boss, my boss's boss, and the head of our business development activities.
Go back into your email application and, one-by-one, create a rule for each of those senders. In my setup, I have two rules:
- For each high priority sender, I mark the email with a 'high priority' tag, and highlight it in a large red colored font.
- For each email that is marked high priority, I forward it to my phone as an SMS (see next tip).
4. Alert yourself via SMS
If you're following the above suggestions, then you are not checking email frequently (likely maximum of 1 or 2 times per day, depending on your situation). With this approach, the chances of you randomly noticing that you received an email from a high priority sender is very low.
To give yourself peace of mind, allow your email application to alert you on the rare occasion that you need to react to email immediately.
Nearly all mobile telephone carriers offer a way to send yourself an SMS via an email address. Again, google is your friend. For example, if you are a Verizon Wireless customer in the United States, you can SMS yourself using the format "1234567890@vtext.com” where "1234567890" should be replaced with your 10 digit mobile phone number.
If you want more convenient solution, a company named AwayFind offers a similar service starting at $5/month for a single personal email account (with a 30-day free trial).
Take care, and I'll talk to you next time.