The Timeless Solution for Managing Your Inbox – Part 4 of 4

As David Allen, leading American productivity consultant and famous for his Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology says, the timeless solution for managing your ‘stuff’, regardless of whatever new technology is available, is having: 

• a process for capturing the things that need your attention
• the mental rigour to clarify and decide what things mean to you
• a trusted system for organising the resulting to-do items
• the personal discipline to take action

And this is so very relevant to the way you handle email each day.

Even if you are a whiz on the keyboard, it’s likely that you, like the rest of us mere mortals, can think and speak much faster than you can type! And yet, so much of your work these days is done via a keyboard and mouse. So, for those of us who spend any amount of time working on a computer, the bottleneck to increased productivity and the ability to get things done is ultimately . . . typing speed.

Whenever working in your inbox, your aim should be to capture anything action or typing you perform multiple times and automate it so that you can repeat it again with as few keystrokes or mouse clicks as possible. This will help you;

·      save heaps of time and unblock a bottleneck to your workplace productivity

·      radically reduce the number of keystrokes and mouse clicks

·      take a lot of the friction out of regular email and admin processes

·      free up your attention for higher-order thinking and decision-making

Here are 7 ways to speed up the way you process email and replies. While all these apply to Outlook, the principles can be used whatever email program you’re using.

1.     Rules allow you to move, flag, and respond to email messages automatically. Rules are almost infinitely customisable and save you enormous amounts of manual manipulation of individual emails. Instead of making the same decision and action time and time again, you make the decision once and the rule performs that action for you in future. 

2.     Templates can be used to compose a message and save for re-use anytime you need it in future, adding any new details if needed. In Gmail this feature is called ‘canned responses’.

3.     In Outlook, Drafts are similar to templates with the added advantage that you can pre-write the subject line, any of the Address Fields (To, CC, BCC), your greeting, sign-off and signature. Once these are saved you can re-use them time and time again, making minor modifications to individual messages if (and as) needed.

4.     Signatures are a way to insert a predefined text block at the end of your email message with just one click. Note that when you insert a signature you are actually swapping the signature - the default signature is removed and replaced by the one that you have selected.

5.     Quick Steps. Whoa . . . Quick Steps – it’s like having your own personal assistant. It is surprising how few EAs have tapped into the power of this feature in Outlook. It allows you to apply multiple actions to an email and quickly manage your mailbox. For example, you can forward an email to your Executive, add a phrase to the subject line, write the text of a message and then automatically file or delete the original message – all with one single click! A wonderful time-saver for many of the tasks you repeat time and time again.

6.     Quick Parts in Outlook are a great way to instantly insert common phrases, sentences or paragraphs that you regularly use when writing a new email or reply. Quick Parts also supports text formatting such as colour, fonts and even fields (i.e: Insert-> Fields…), allowing you to create templates that hold a reference to and highlight the current date or mention a date that is x days into the future.

7.     Auto-correct can be made to work like a text expander and allow you to auto-fill acronyms, words and phrases. For example, I type

·      ‘NZ’ then spacebar and it expands to ‘New Zealand’

·      '7RDD' expands to '7 Reasons to Use Delay Delivery for Your Outgoing Email'

·      ‘T&C’ auto fills to two sentences about your terms and conditions

·      ‘LM’ inserts 5 paragraphs of text – instantly!

The beauty of auto-correct is that you simply type your preferred acronym and then hit the space bar to continue typing your message – no need to break the flow of your typing or move fingers away to use the mouse or function keys.

And there’s a bonus, 8th way to minimise typing and speed up email processing. More and more we are starting to use voice to text software (eg: Dragon Naturally Speaking software, Cortana, Siri etc) to speed up email replies and new messages. This could be particularly important if you injure a finger, hand or arm.

Some of these ideas will save you big chunks of time and others are only one percenters. But even the one percenters add up enormously over the period of a year. And, according to James Clear in hi excellent book ‘Atomic Habits’, if you are able to improve just 1% per day, by the end of a year you’ll be 37% better!

Given the amount of time you spend using a keyboard and mouse every day, it’s well worth your while to invest some effort in learning some of the ideas above.

If you’re interested to learn more about how to get control of your email, revolutionise the inbox, reduce your stress and be more productive in the workplace, I’d welcome the opportunity to show you how to do this – for yourself, for your team or for your next conference. Get in touch via email, or better still give me a call.

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