What are the best practices for using email to manage your time on long-term projects?

1 Define your email goals

Before you start sending or receiving emails related to your project, you need to define your email goals. What are you trying to achieve with each email? How do you want to communicate with your team members, clients, or stakeholders? How often do you need to update them on your status, issues, or feedback? How do you want them to respond to your emails? By setting clear and specific email goals, you can avoid unnecessary or irrelevant messages, reduce ambiguity or misunderstanding, and align your expectations with your recipients.

3 Schedule your email time

Checking your email constantly can interrupt your workflow, distract your attention, and lower your productivity. To avoid this, you can schedule your email time and stick to it. You can choose a specific time of the day, such as the morning, the afternoon, or the evening, to check, read, reply, or send emails. You can also set a time limit for each email session, such as 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or an hour, and use a timer or an alarm to remind you when to stop. By scheduling your email time, you can focus on your project tasks, avoid procrastination, and manage your energy.

5 Follow the email etiquette

The way you use email can also influence the way others perceive you and your project. If you use email inappropriately, unprofessionally, or disrespectfully, you can damage your reputation, credibility, or relationship. To follow the email etiquette, you can respect your recipients' privacy, time, and preferences, avoid sending or forwarding spam, jokes, or sensitive information, use a polite and respectful tone, avoid using all caps, emoticons, or slang, and proofread your emails for spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors.

6 Review your email performance

Finally, you can use email to review your performance and improve your results. You can use email analytics, feedback, or surveys to measure your email effectiveness, such as your open rate, response rate, click-through rate, or satisfaction rate. You can also use email reports, summaries, or highlights to document your project achievements, challenges, or learnings. By reviewing your email performance, you can identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, or threats, and make adjustments or improvements for your future projects.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?