Think of Email as a Bad Coworker

The best way to think about e-mail is as a very annoying colleague who won't stop interrupting you every 5 minutes to talk about nothing. And, since you can't punch email in the nose, this article will help you get started in dealing with email in a positive way.

If you're just plain alive, human, and have an e-mail account, you have been overwhelmed by email. The volume of email continues to grow, so the question is how do you keep email from taking over all of the waking hours of your day? And do so without ignoring everyone who you need to interact with - or at least keep mildly happy to keep your job?

The answer is that you're probably dealing with e-mail all wrong and, as a result, it is taking more of your time than a college these days explaining why it's worth $60K/year for your child to be educated at your own home. Sorry...I've got college students.

While I send out some emails to some factories to see if they need some more young workers that have an excellent chance of recovering from COVID, why don't you read on and see if you can't make a start dealing with that annoying coworker, Mr. Email?

[This is an enhanced transcript from a snippet of one of our Small Business Technology How To Videos. An "enhanced transcript", by the way, is where I take what I actually said in the video and add some clarification and some detail until I get to what I wished I had said!]

Enjoy

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Tip number three is you want to set up specific email times on your Outlook Calendar. [For more tips, head over to our website where you'll find our "Rule Your Email" video series.]

Email on a Calendar? Does that mean I schedule time to be frustrated?

Why put email times on the calendar? Email will suck up every last bit of time you have, if you let it. But, if you schedule specific times in your schedule to do email, you're going to be much better off.

There will be a future video about how to control the volumes of email that you're working with. But before we get to that skill / trick / capability, we've got to schedule specific time to deal with e-mail.

What I mean by that is that you will set aside time in your day to deal with e-mail and that is all that you'll do during that time. No calls, no meetings, nothing else. And you'll be amazed at how much you can get done in email if you focus on just that and don't make it something you're doing while a conference call is active, or in an actual meeting, or when people right in front of your face are trying to talk with you.

Conversely, the other part of scheduling specific email time is that you don't work on email the rest of the day. I know it's tough. I know you've got new emails popping up all the time demanding your attention. As Nancy Reagan said, "Just Say No!"

The best way to defeat the Email Distraction Monster is to keep your Outlook screen on the Calendar page all day and not the e-mail. There are other parts to the puzzle like turning off the pop-up notifications and sounds on your phone as well as Outlook, but just leaving Outlook on the Calendar screen is the one that will make a huge difference in your life.

The best way to defeat the Email Distraction Monster is to keep your Outlook screen on the Calendar page all day and not the email.

Best practices for scheduling email. No that doesn't mean you put "Click Delete All at 4pm" on your calendar.

I find it's helpful to schedule your main e-mail time at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day. This should give you enough time to deal with all of the pressing email without skipping around like a rabbit on meth.

If you're anything like me, once you start into emails, it leads to replying, forwarding, researching, clicking links, and somehow ending up looking at the latest Shark Tank inventions, thinking, "I could do that!"

How much time you set up depends on how much email you have to deal with during the day. Most of us have more email than you can shake a stick at, but keep in mind that only the important, "high priority" stuff needs to be dealt with during this scheduled email time.

The remainder, think of it as "low priority email" can be all evaluated in one session once or twice a week. In our future videos on Outlook Email Pro Tips, we'll talk a little more about how to deal with all of this email, but for now just schedule a much smaller amount of time to deal with "low priority email".

Not Enough Time In The Day

What do you do if there isn't enough time for you to legitimately cover all of your "high priority" email during this time? You make a change on your calendar.

What usually happens is that people get in a productive groove and just let whatever is next on their calendar suffer so that they can continue making progress. While the productivity groove is a good thing, the point of Rule Your Calendar is that you have a realistic look at your schedule.

While writing this piece, I noted that I'm in a good groove and going over the time that I had allotted for it. I swapped back over to the calendar, I moved the next, hourlong item on my calendar to another timeslot and used the handles on the "Write Enhanced Transcript" item to expand to cover another hour.

In this way, I'm not ignoring the other thing that I had to do - I still have to find a place for it. This also helps me evaluate my entire week for realistic places to put work that comes up. 

So when someone calls and says, "Hey - I need your help. I just need these 45 reports with 300 pages each. Can you handle that?", I can figure out that will take 4 hours (I'm an excellent report-maker) and immediately tell the person on the phone, "No problem - I've got time next Thursday to do that."

Sure, they might splutter and exclaim how important what they left to the last minute really is, but all of my work is represented on my calendar. I can tell them exactly what I'm doing with every hour between now and next Thursday, so arguing is eliminated. Okay, reduced.

If you can stick to your guns, people will eventually learn that when you tell them, "Next Thursday by 4pm", you actually mean it. In other words, you become reliable in a way that most employers only dream of.

In other words, you become reliable in a way that most customers / partners / employers only dream of.

Protect Your Time

So, in my Outlook Calendar, I'm going to just set up a "high priority email time" an hour in the morning when people are less likely to be bugging me. And I'm also going to add that same time in the afternoon. For me, that should easily cover all "hgih priority" email.

I'm going to make those recurring calendar events every weekday.

So, what I've got there is a defined email time that is scheduled / blocked out.

That way I have time to take control of my email before it goes way out of control and I start getting some really nasty messages from my boss. Or before I do a mass delete and, hopefully, customers / partners / employers will come back to me for stuff they really wanted.

Instead, when people want to schedule a meeting with me, my Outlook Calendar shows that time as unavailable so I can focus on the "high priority" stuff.

With something as simple as blocked out, focused e-mail time, you can gain control of your time and maximize your productivity. Who in your life is going to complain about that!?