How To Cut Your Email Volume In Half
There’s no worse feeling than opening your inbox to find hundreds of emails that need your immediate attention. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do for a living, a seemingly endless flow influx of emails is certain to give anyone a tension headache.
If you’re suffering from productivity problems at work -- or even at home -- your high email volume may be to blame. This shouldn’t come as a surprise when 53 percent of office workers prefer to send an email rather than picking up the phone.
Managing your inbox sucks. Be more productive by cutting your email in half.
Here’s how I did it:
Step 1: Find the culprits of your endless inbox. Take a look at who you’re receiving the most emails from every day, as well as how many emails are being sent directly to you versus being CCed. This will allow you to target a few of your potential problem areas.
If you’re using Gmail for your primary email, you can monitor this more easily by using Gmail Meter. And for a better “people-centric” view of your inbox, check out Immersion from MIT.
Step 2: Politely ask people to reduce their number of emails. Now that you know the names of a few of your inbox-filling cuprates, it’s time to have a face-to-face or phone conversation about reducing the emails. You’ll get to the bottom of the problem much faster this way.
Regardless of whether the person is one of your project managers or a close friend, have a brief solution-based conversation. Set up a call or a meeting to discuss a few alternatives to the number of daily or weekly emails you’re receiving. Ask the emailer to come with options, but also present your own.
Step 3: Set rules for being CC’d. While this may come as a shock to some of you, there’s really no reason for you to be CC’d on every single email in your company, a project, or within a specific group. Have a brief conversation with those who feel the need to CC you on everything to set some rules for using this basic function.
For example, tell them to avoid adding your name unless there is something directly needing your attention in the email. Better yet, have them call you when something important arises instead.
Step 4: Know when to pick up the phone. You’ve laid some ground rules for your repeat email offenders, but now it’s time to lay some for yourself. From here on out, plan to pick up the phone and make a call when there are two or more emails in a chain. If something can’t be hashed out in two emails, then a 10-minute phone call will do the trick. This will not only cut down your email volume, it will also allow you to tackle issues much faster.
Step 5: Stop using email as your only communication channel. Are you guilty of using email for something that’s more easily managed with another communication channel? Email isn’t the answer to all of your communication needs. If you want to have a quick chat with someone, consider using instant messaging. For more pressing topic, pick up the phone or schedule a video chat.
Step 6: Take advantage of helpful tools. If you’re sick of unwanted emails or a generally disorganized inbox, it’s time to set up automated sorting and filters. Most major email programs offer an area for you to choose sorting rules to help send unwanted emails into the spam file or any other filter you think is necessary.
Some other helpful email tools to try include Unroll.me and SaneBox. With Unroll.me, you can get back the time it takes to sort through all of your emails by receiving one daily digest email of the multiple subscription emails you receive. While SaneBox acts as your personal email assistant by thoroughly filtering your inbox to help rank emails based on importance and organizes them accordingly.
Step 7: Put BCC to use. If you’re looking to keep someone in the loop that isn’t necessarily part of the conversation, try BCCing them. This works perfectly for when you’re introduced to someone via email. Instead of keeping this person CC’d and likely annoyed, move them to the BCC section.
Put these steps into play to transform your inbox into a more organized, productive, and efficient place.
How do you keep handle a large influx of emails?
About Ilya Pozin:
Founder of Ciplex. Columnist for Inc, Forbes & LinkedIn. Gadget lover, investor, mentor, husband, father, and '30 Under 30' entrepreneur. Follow Ilya below to stay up-to-date with his articles and updates!
Head Of Production at AB Vista
11 年Vacation emails are fun. Best thing to do is to read them from the top down. Many times I find that if you read your emails starting with the oldest first and make the mistake of answering, you find someone else has already answered the same email. Sometimes it is the person that sent the email to begin with. Also, Outlook has a great function that allows you to sort by conversation. You can do this and summarize the email with reading the newest email. I recently returned from vacation with 458 emails in my inbox. I had them down to 17 emails that still required my action, all done in about 2 hours. The rest were read and filed.
Principal Consultant at PME4U Pty Ltd
11 年I love people who ignore their email, I just leave them just of decisions. Seriously, how many of you were born in the 1800's? Email is a critical communication and document management tool. If you cant use it properly, get out if the workforce and make room for those who are genuinely productive. Come back from leave, sort by from, delete the junk or move to @done folder, read the ones from those that matter and either respond, file or convert to a task or appointment. Sort the rest by subject and repeat, job done in 30 minutes to an hour. Through your work day, if your at a PC, set the email client to pop up notifications and train yourself to glance at them as they come in and make an immediate decision as to whether it warrants attention. Mobile, scan your inbox frequently to keep on top of what is there. Email is the centre of my world, I can keep 10 jobs moving simultaneously with it, and people who phone me regularly get ignored unless they have been emailing me first so I know why they are calling. Incidentally, people who ban you from checking messages during long meetings should be counselled by HR and placed on performance management for attempting to cripple the organisation. But that is just my humble opinion...
Author & Motivational Speaker | Digital Marketing Consultant | Escaped the 9-5 Grind to Inspire and Empower Other
11 年Step #4 is true and helpful.
Head of Finance
11 年I personally like the idea of allocating time to go through emails. I do it first thing when I get into the office and later in the afternoon. I have discovered that important and urgent emails will usually be followed by a telephone call.