7 Ways to Deal With Email in a Time Efficient Manner

Email can eat up all your time, at least any spare time and more, if you let it. It is supposed to be a tool but can turn out to be a time productivity nightmare. Somehow many people thinking email is their top priority at work and even in life sometimes, but obviously this is not true. Email should be a help, not a hindrance. Here are seven ways to help tame the email beast. 1) Read email at set times for set periods of time. In other words, schedule email just like all other activities. You might do email for 30 minutes in the morning, 45 minutes in the afternoon, and maybe a quick peek after dinner, of whatever is appropriate for you. Looking once a day may be more than enough for many people. Email is rarely your highest priority and shouldn’t be treated as such. 2) Unless expecting something special, do not let incoming email interrupt you. No email making noises or other indications that it’s arrived. In fact your email program should probably be not running most of the time. Email is not a synchronous communication medium like the telephone. If you answer everyone in 5 minutes, they’ll expect it, but if you answer within 24 hours people will grow to expect that as well. 3) Sometimes email is not the correct communication medium. What might be a serious of emails flying back and forth for a few days can often be settled by stopping by someone’s cube or office for 5 minutes. If you think that is the case then just do it. 4) I often answer emails while driving and so can you. I’ll often check email right before I get into my car, and return the emails via telephone. This can work amazingly well, although some people seem to have forgotten that the phone works! In additional, you are using what is otherwise down time, driving/commuting time, to be productive. Give this one a try and you might be amazed. 5) Only very rarely should a short email cause a long response. I know people who will launch into an hour or more or research and writing to answer a casual one line email question, potentially wasting lots of time on the process. Occasionally this will make sense, but occasionally might be once every few months. 6) You can’t read or deal with everything. I get hundreds of email a week, sometimes hundreds a day, and you may too. Some emails I may forward to others who are more interested or responsible. Some may refer to or be resources such as useful newsletters and videos that are valuable to my work or personal life. Why there are some regular emails like a few newsletters I look forward to every week. But when my email inbox is overflowing, I just may not have time to read them. Quite often I’ll delete lots of “great stuff” I just don’t have time to read anytime soon or perhaps forever. 7) Clean your inbox! It’s not a storage area! Have other folders you quickly move your emails to if you need to save them. Email should be a productivity tool, not a sacred cow and time waster. It should be your servant, not your master.