Do you have control over your email, or do you suffer from email overload? You can actually neglect your work and lose an incredible amount of time. Many people could safely change their jobs to ‘Email Specialists’, as they feel they keep sending emails all day. We should learn how to manage email overload.
See if you recognize this story:
You are doing some work and a match comes. You focus your attention and read the email. You may be busy writing answers, or doing quick tasks for up to five minutes.
When you are done, you have to return to the work you were doing. You need to re-engage in your work, losing time to regain your focus and flow. Getting started is the hardest part of any job and we finish it by allowing ourselves to be distracted by email.
Tired of email overload? Ready for a new way, with less time spent finishing tasks and less time handling email – and more work happening at the same time? let’s get It on!
Lesson One: Email is not your friend
We instinctively look forward to email as it brings us exciting news and fun work. Sadly, most of the time it brings regular stuff to you which only gives you what you can do.
Keeping your mailbox open at all times is one of those universal habits that makes no sense. If you want things to happen to you, then you need to make then be done.
Email is like an unregistered child that you need to handle. If you don’t, I’ll take your life with your endless interruptions and often condescending requests.
So let me show you a way to deal with email which takes only five minutes to set up. This will help you keep your email in check and give you more space to do your real job.Apply this to Manage E-mail Overload In Easy Steps day to day life.
First aid for email overload
You have a serious case of email overload and you are missing the pedal. No worries what to do here!
Create an action folder in your inbox.
Go through your mail, choose the 10 to 15 most important people and put them in the action folder. Work from here until your inbox is cleared.
Create a ‘Temporary’ folder. Enter your full inbox here. Everything! You will work through it later, now you can stop worrying about it.
Hey Salam, your inbox is empty! Add your most important email functions to email and start with email overload prevention.
Email Overload Prevention
When working with email overload prevention, follow these steps.
Work from old to recent, from top to bottom.
Every time you open it go through your COMPLETE inbox. So don’t leave your email open all the time; Open it and then deal with the inbox. This means that you can no longer ‘check your mail’, there is work to be done!
Process quickly. Take one of the following verbs with each match. Do not spend more than half a minute on any email.
Delete (as much as possible)
Collection (when it contains information that you may need later)
Answer (quickly, at most four lines) and delete / archive
Put it in the action folder and add it to your list. Important: Do not work on any of the DOS while processing your mail! No, not even the small ones.
Clean the inbox, close your email program, or turn on the Internet.
Limit your email time. Open your inbox twice a day to process it, then close it.
Only email. Think about the golden rule of productivity: choose one thing and dedicate yourself to it. There is a difference between emails and what they do – keep them separate. When processing your emails, make a list, then close your email and start at work (according to your preferences). Email overload is also the part of Manage E-mail Overload In Easy Steps.
Looking after the old business
So now you have got your email under control. great! You are still sitting on a huge pile of emails that may or may not have something important. Here’s how you deal with it:
- Process it in small portions. There is nothing more deadly than quickly going through hundreds of emails. Do this in small blocks of 5 minutes and it gets really fun! This is a perfect break from any other work, a no-brainer with immediate results.
- Use the same process for your inbox. Start at the top, 30 seconds per second, delete as much as possible, email only …
Do this and your inbox can be cleaned up within a week, and named Email Monster. Congratulations on reclaiming your freedom! Here, there is a badge. Apply all the above in order to reduce to check manage email overload.
Managing Email Overload: 8 More Fast and Easy Techniques
1. Delete the newsletters. Face it: You’re never going to get through all those interesting newsletters and offers. Let it go, you can find everything you need in Google when the time is right. So delete all those daily, weekly and other digest mailers from your ‘Two Process’ and press that Unsubscribe button.
2. Send fewer emails. Call or visit. Get your answer from the horse’s mouth, and avoid endless email conversations with Half the World in CC. Do not mail someone who is sitting away from you! A good test: When you feel the impulse to send a mail, ask yourself: ‘Can I resolve this myself?’ You probably can’t!
3. Summary shows. Some people are addicted to email. They are like living status updates, containing every idea they have and also sending it to everyone to connect remotely. Very tiring, especially when they are small for you to do. How to deal with them? Scan content quickly, do not reply to them and gather them in your ‘Action’ folder (see previous post on email management). Plan some time to process them. Then group them by sender, go through them one at a time and write to Todos. You can also send an email to that person with your list, just let them know you are on it.
4. Send short emails. Do not rewrite the Bible. The long emails are exhausting to read and nobody really gets what you’re saying. less is more. Keep it under 4 sentences. Or how it goes for a short answer: Resist the urge to reply at all. If you want a friendly chat with lots of people, call them.
5. Check your emails at least 3 to 5 times a day. You can always be on top of things and make sure everything is taken into consideration. Even better is to let things run their course while you complete your work.
6. Make rules. You can apply a CC filter that creates mails that do not let you go directly to a different folder. You can plan some time to go through it, without wasting time on an email conversation. Stop getting irritated with it, just ignore it.
7. Feel free to delete lots of emails. Luggage in the attic is like luggage: very hard to get rid of. What if you ever need it again? I can personally say that I rarely need one of my emails again, and when I did I found another way to deal with the situation. Live in the present, let go of the past can you do this!
8. Avoid doing double work. When you get the same question all the time, write your answer in a document or email template. Or put it on the website, and see it in your answer.
Telecommuting: how to increase productivity from home
Congratulations, you can work from home! It is a great freedom that you can connect your home with work, which does not have to be committed … but with freedom comes responsibility. What if you spend all day in household chores? Or you are sitting there in your pajamas, on which no one is there to check you and you .. You find that you are not doing much?
1. Create a division between home and work. It can make a world of difference for a different work space. Ideally, you have an office or studio in your home or neighborhood. Failing, you can close with just one room.
2. Put on your work clothes. Don’t run around in your pajamas! Dress like you will at work. Because you know what? You really are. Clothes get you in the right mood to work, and it is far less embarrassing when your coworker pays you an unexpected visit.
3. Be punctual for a long time. So you don’t have to jam the traffic- enjoy that extra cup of coffee! Over time, honor the hours of work you have set for yourself. If not, you can be one of those people who roam around all day and then when it is fun, ‘have to finish something’. It is a shameful thing!
4. Don, T. Watch TV. Do not go to the movies, nor launderette. You are working, so work. Of course, make sure to take a good pause now and again and remind yourself how good it is to work from home.
5. Go out for lunch. Working from home is liberating but also different and lead to us how To Manage E-mail Overload In Easy Steps. Stay in touch with your friends and colleagues, make new connections and go out to lunch and connect with the world. Better yet, go to a business networking lunch!
6. Someone has to answer. This is easy to do when a person is watching and when we need to justify our time. So get one of these mechanisms to work for you (without making it unbearable). Ask your colleagues or friends to check up on you.
Final World
Some people are addicted to email. They’re like living status updates, including every thought they have and sending it to everyone even remotely connected. Apply the above to manage email overload in day to day work.