It’s easy to get sucked into the email vortex and end up spending your whole day working on email and when five pm rolls around feel that you’ve done nothing. I spent about 2 hours last week figuring out some sensible rules that will work for me.
Emails relating to delegated stuff gets forwarded automatically, daily reports get sent to one folder and I can check through them all at once, but the best thing I did was automate CC emails.
Whereas once they clogged up my mailbox and made it impossible for me to prioritise or even find specific emails now they float into my mail box, and the float out again almost as quickly to a designated folder. I admit to sitting and watching this phenomenon several times.
Why didn’t I do this earlier? It’s only this year that I’ve taken over formally managing a team, suddenly there’s a whole lot of stuff people think I need to see – in fact my team take care of it perfectly well and in general there’s no need for my involvement.
Email management comes with the usual set of tips – and following them makes your day easier.
- turn off the on-screen notification
- set up extra folders with associated rules to get rid of stuff that’s neither urgent nor important
- turn off email, this is akin to blasphemy in some companies but it works.
- set an email routine to control the times you work on email
- if you’re really completely overwhelmed consider declaring email bankruptcy
Fortunately by following 1-4 I’m not ready to call email bankruptcy now.
image vortex via pixabay
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