They go into more detail on each point. Here is the cliff notes of a recent Lifehacker article. Their advice is bold My comments are not

1. “Batch” email at set times. This is huge. I process my inbox to zero and then when I get a chance I batch reply to the emails in the “Need Reply” folder. I would spend even less time on email if I checked it less often but I am a bit compulsive.
2. Send and read email at different times. – This is hard to do if you use a web based email program like gmail. If you use Outlook it also helps to turn off automatic send and receive. This allows you to batch your email (see point #1)
3. Don’t scan email if you can’t immediately fix problems encountered – Employing this trick is what saves me so much time. I used to read and re read emails over and over without doing anything about them. Now I put them into one of my folders and don’t worry about it again until I get a chance to act or reply.
4. Don’t BIF people during off-hours. BIF stands for Before I Forget.
5. Don’t use the inbox for reminders or as a to-do list. I put my actionable emails together in a “Need Action” folder. This way they don’t clog my inbox and I can keep track of them.
6. Set rules for email-to-phone escalation. Sometimes a 3 minute phone call can save you from 30 minutes of email. A good rule of thumb I learned from my dad is this:

   If emotions are involved use the phone instead.

   Emotionally charged emails need too much proofing to be worth it. Too often even after spending 30 minutes on drafting an email the recipient still misinterprets it. If you are too angry to make a phone call you are too angry to send an email.

7. Before writing an email, ask yourself: “what problem am I trying to solve?” or “what is my ideal outcome?” Don’t send purposeless emails. They waste everyone’s time.
8. Learn to make suggestions instead of asking questions. The “where do you want to eat? I donno where do you want to eat?” passive question asking mindset does not make for efficient email processing.

How do you handle your email load? Leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

Related posts:

1. How to process twice the email in half the time – Part 1 After years of digital coaching I have realized that most...
2. 10 Laws for Better Email If you ever feel overwhelmed or frustrated with email this...

After years of digital coaching I have realized that most people stink at email. Here are the two people I most often encounter:

Person A: This person spends hours checking email each week sending and receiving dozens of emails every day. Yet, Person A seems to be always behind in email regardless of how much time he or she invests in it. If you work a white collar job you probably can relate to Person A.

Person B: Person B doesn’t care much about email and so he never checks it. You never know if this person gets your emails or not because he rarely responds and when he does it’s days later. If you go to UMHB you are probably like Person B.

So how do you stay on top of you email without it consuming your life?

The following video has changed my life when it comes to email. I now spend half the time doing email and I am always able to leave my inbox empty. How do I do it? I follow Merlin Man’s advice.

I had a folder for each activity and a folder for each person who sent me a lot of email. The problem of this system was that it was inefficient. Instead of having one inbox I had a dozen. Now all important mail comes to one place from which I send it to one of the following 6 folders/labels.

1. Encouragement – These are nice emails people have sent me. I don’t use this folder much (it only has 7 emails right now) but it is nice to set aside encouragement for a rainy day.
2. Need Action – These are my action related emails. If you email me and ask me to do something it will end up in this folder before I do it.
3. Need Read – These are emails I need to read when I get a chance
4. Need Reply – These are emails I need to reply to.
5. Reference – These are emails I will need later. This folder is mostly full of book related emails I need to keep track of.
6. Unimportant – I have setup so that anything unimportant (facebook etc) goes to this folder. This is my only folder that has mail rules related to it.

Most emails I scan and then archive. Only a few make it to one of these folders. Gmail lets me search through my archive which is helpful in finding an email I need when I need it. I don’t need to file school email in a school folder. I just search for the exact email I need and it comes up.
Inbox Zero by Merlin Man

In this video Merlin Mann, productivity guru and creator of the popular 43 folders website, shares his secret to keeping his email inbox at zero. I know its an hour long… But if you invest an hour into learning how to “do” email more efficiantly it will come back to you many times over.Does your inbox overwhelm you? Leave a comment and tell me what do you think.

Related posts:

1. How to process twice the email in half the time – Part 2 If you haven’t checked out Part 1 look it over....
2. 10 Laws for Better Email If you ever feel overwhelmed or frustrated with email this...

Thanks to Joe Hootman sending this to me.

No related posts.