Managing Your New Year Inbox
Victoria (Viki) Bennett
Business | Strategy | Marketing | Crowdfunding | QEII Platinum Jubilee Medal Recipient
I know what it's like; whether you try to keep an eye on your email, or switch of completely you still come back to a huge pile of emails that can really undo all the good of the holiday season. Get into the office, lock the door and try this technique to manage your inbox, so that you can leave this day knowing that you have got stuff done, and it is the most important stuff.
Set up flags for each of the four categories above and a "to read" folder. Scan each title, and first few lines if you have that view and categorise each email based on how important it is, and how urgent. Flag each as you scan through them into one of the four categories. Ideally you should only handle an email once, so if it is not important and not urgent, such as there are baked goods in the kitchen on 24th December, delete it, or an update on a project you are interested in but is not core to your role, drag it into the to read folder.
Your focus is to find the important and urgent emails, those ones you need to act upon today. When you consider importance there are two factors, importance to the business and importance to your role. In other words big picture vs. little picture. If there are a few important and urgent emails, focus on the big picture ones.
For the important, but not urgent, you have some time. Set a flag in your calendar, when you know you will have time to focus and do a quality job, giving yourself plenty of time to complete the task.
Ideally you should get to the stage where you are working in the Important but Not Urgent box. If you are, that's great, and if you aren't then check your filters, are you doing stuff that is urgent, but perhaps isn't important to the business or your role? When it comes to urgency somebody may be jumping up and down saying something is urgent. Don't listen to the squeaky wheel, or the office bully, who gets everyone to focus on doing their work, rather than the most important and urgent tasks for the business.
For Urgent and Not Important tasks, that are not important for your job role, is there someone else who would be better to handle this task? Alternatively do you need to have a conversation with the person who sent the request to understand why it is such a priority, and what is the value to the business. This sort of conversation is best face to face, or at least a phone call. You could both learn from it, perhaps you learn why something is important for the business, and the other person can understand why it isn't a priority for you or for the business, to reduce future requests. Don't worry about getting a reputation for saying no, if you are seen as someone who gets stuff done that is important to the business and core to your role, it isn't an issue, especially if you can help out when you have some slack time.
Slack time probably isn't something you have today, but if you focus on the Important and Urgent, you can feel satisfied by the end of the day, and with a more manageable inbox.
Director, Internal Audit at Alberta Central
9 年To add on to Viki's article, I am used to getting hundreds of emails per day that must be read and actioned in addition to doing my regular job. My goal each day is not have more than 1-2 emails in my inbox and I have managed to keep it that way for many years - most days, in fact, it sits at zero. And talk about a liberating experience. I shudder when I'm at someone's desk and I see an inbox with thousands of messages. My strategy is this: 1) Setup a filing system of sub-folders on my *.pst file (personal folders file for the non-outlook people); this system allowed me countless times to refer back to information for several years back and proved invaluable at saving me time. Keep your *.pst file on a network drive so it's backed up, versus on your desktop or laptop - that way you'll never be subject to it being lost in the event your machine peters out. 2) All emails on my desktop/laptop/smart devices have a preview pane that allows me to quickly scan them for content and triage accordingly. 3) As Viki states above - determine your course of action, most times I am delegating or filing; there were actually very few that required immediate attention. You quickly learn who and how people communicate (and which ones are just copying you for the sake of); most of those emails rarely took more than 20-30 seconds to digest and either file or delete. Or as Viki says above, you can politely say no or ask to be removed from their "distribution" list. 4) I set aside two blocks of time each day - typically, 30 mins. at the beginning of the day and 30 mins at the end of the day to manage messages and act. I will preface this as I typically work a nine to ten hour day. Setting aside time was something I picked up in my consulting days where a message couldn't go unanswered for more than a day. I also use this time to clean up my sent items and file important or relevant responses in my personal folders. And despite the extra 2-3 minutes to do so, saves me hours in the end whenever I have to reference a conversation/information. 5) Very rarely do I put off or flag something top read later as a result of step 4 above. While I used to do that, what ended up happening is I was putting things off and not dealing with them effectively and eventually things piled up again.