How to Manage Email So That It's NOT Managing?You
Richard Fast
Creator MindTrap Games | Author | Speaker | Helping People Learn How to Make the "Right" Decision When it REALLY Matters | richardfast.com
Email: Either You Manage IT, or IT WILL Manage?You!
Taking complete charge of this insidious time and productivity thief?—?“email,” offers a lot of freedom and stress relief.
Email is merely a means of exchanging information, so if a large part of your day is spent mired in email?—?pushing it to other inboxes or having it pushed into yours?—?then you’re not managing; you’re being managed.
Think of Your Inbox as a Mini Postal?Station
Your Inbox should function just like a sorting station at a postal office.
Mail comes in, it gets sorted, then routed to its proper destination. A sorting station doesn’t let mail build up to a certain point before sorting, nor does it treat some mail as worthy of saving for some special treatment or imaginary future.
The rule is simple: All mail that comes in has a destination, and the job of a mail sorting room is to move mail to its proper destination as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Your Inbox is NOT a To-Do List, nor is It a Holding?Station
Your Inbox is a temporary landing spot for incoming mail that should be sorted and sent to its proper destination each day. Like a sorting station, it should be 100% empty at the end of each day?—?no exceptions!
Living with an Empty Inbox is Psychologically Liberating!
Whether you check your email twice a day or five times a day, if each visit to your Inbox results in facing dozens, if not hundreds, of old emails staring back at you, it will have a debilitating effect on your sense of control. It’ll serve as a constant reminder that you’re disorganized, overloaded and overwhelmed, which is highly likely to trigger feelings (perhaps non-consciously) of stress and anxiety.
On the other hand, if you check your Inbox and it’s either empty or contains only the latest arrivals, you’ll enjoy a justifiable feeling of control.
Note: Emptying your Inbox daily doesn’t suggest that you’re going to complete all the tasks it represents; it just means that you’re going to move every single message to its proper place.
Some projects may require days or even months to complete, but every arrival has a destination… and many may very well go straight to trash!
By having an empty inbox, you’ve freed yourself to focus entirely on the work you need to do.
Learning to Live by the OHIO?Method
ONLY HANDLE IT?ONCE!
Would you go to your mailbox at the end of your driveway, sort through everything, grab a couple of the more urgent letters and put the rest back… only to go back the following day and sort through the new arrivals as well as all the old stuff to see if any of those are now urgent?
Of course you wouldn’t, so why would you handle your email inbox any differently?
Three Easy Steps to End Each Day with an Empty?Inbox
Living with an empty Inbox requires nothing more than the discipline to do the following three steps just long enough for it to become a daily habit.
I realize that you may have dozens, if not hundreds, or even thousands of emails in your Inbox; if so, see (How to Empty an Over-flowing Email Inbox)
Step One: Scan your emails, looking for everything that’s personal.
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This is a great way to start the day, enjoying a few messages from family and friends. When you’ve finished reading each one, either put it into a special personal folder or delete it. In either case, it no longer resides in your Inbox.
Step Two: Spam. ‘Nuff said. Delete.
Step Three: Since personal emails and spam are gone from your Inbox, only two types of emails can remain: information emails and To-Do emails. This is key. How you handle the remaining emails is the true test of email management.
Information Emails: These emails contain FYIs (helpful or not), newsletters, reports, etc. Scan them quickly and make a decision. If it’s something you really want to read?—?and it will only take a minute or two at most, then read it and delete it. If it’s something that you really want to read and will take more than two minutes, put it in a folder titled MUST READ and get it out of your Inbox.
To-Do Emails and the Two-Minute Rule?—?Now it’s time to apply the two-minute rule.
If an email can be dealt with in two minutes (be sure it can), then deal with it immediately and delete it.
Note: Suppose you get an email request that will take several days to complete. This will fall under the two-minute rule and the upcoming to-do list. Under the two-minute rule, you might dash off a quick reply;
Thanks, Susan. I received your project summary request. It will take me a couple of days to complete, but I will send it back as soon as possible.
The purpose of this reply covers two things;
At this point, your Inbox has only one kind of email message remaining: to-do messages. Take the remaining messages and move them to your To-Do folder.
There. Your Inbox is now empty.
Note what you’ve accomplished so far. In just a few minutes, you’ve not only emptied your Inbox but also eliminated a chronic source of stress: email overload.
At this point, the only items left are matters that require your serious attention. You’re now at the point where you can plan your real work… what you’ll do for the day, week or months ahead.
How To Leave Your Inbox at the End of the?Day
After cooking and enjoying an evening meal, we naturally wash everything and put it away. After all, it would be pretty depressing to wake up to a kitchen full of dirty pots and dishes caked with dried-on food from last night’s dinner.
Email is not so different. About fifteen minutes before you’re ready to quit for the day, empty your Inbox using the same Three-Step procedure you used earlier.
It won’t take long, and you’ll love the feeling you’ll have when you start your day the next morning.
Mastering Email… to Reduce Stress and Maximize Your Health and Productivity (15 Part?Series)