In planning for our recent seven-week trip to Europe (of which I worked for four weeks and took three weeks off), I spent some time reconfiguring my e-mail setup to make it easier to manage, and I think that I was at least somewhat successful. Here are some thoughts, and feel free to share your own tips!
These days, I think it’s a given that we’re all in e-mail overload. The sources are almost too many to count; I receive e-mail from my clients, colleagues and friends (thankfully), from every professional association that I belong to, from Google Groups and Yahoo Groups that I’ve joined, from my daughter’s school, from Facebook and Twitter, from all the schools I went to, from the yoga studio I haven’t been to in six months, and so on and so on, to the point that even our garbage collection and electric companies send me e-mail newsletters every month. Part of an e-mail coping strategy has to be logistical (setting up better ways to deal with your e-mail) and part of it has to be conceptual (having the right mindset about e-mail).
First, logistics: If “checking e-mail” means that you’re deleting 90% of what’s in your inbox, you need to do some unsubscribing and filtering. This was step #1 of my pre-trip e-mail plan. Whenever I checked my e-mail during the month before we left, I took a look at each message and tried to assign it to one of three categories:
- I want/need to read this as soon as it comes in (messages from clients and colleagues)
- I want/need to read this at some point, but it’s not urgent (groups, some e-mail newsletters)
- I don’t want/need to read this at all
If a message fit category 2, I created a filter for it that bypassed my inbox. If you use the Gmail interface, here’s the Gmail support page on creating labels. Gmail also allows you to “bypass the Inbox” when you label something, so that you never see that message until you want to. If a message fit category 3, I unsubscribed from it. I tried to be merciless, because I really needed to slash my e-mail volume. This triage system cut my inbox volume by about 60%.
Now, concept: I’ve found that for me, the best way to cut the amount of time I spend on e-mail is to answer messages right away. I’m not great about this if something requires further thought or research before I can reply to the person. But a few years ago I read The Personal Efficiency Program, which promotes the concept of “processing” e-mail rather than “reading” e-mail. PEP advocates an e-mail strategy that’s similar to the “one touch” rule for dealing with paper; you only touch something once, either to deal with it or to toss it, and I think this is a good concept.
I’m efficient about replying to urgent e-mails, but I’m less good at replying to e-mails that are not urgent but need a reply. I feel like these strategies are helping, because I was able to get through my vacation backlog of 200+ e-mails in only one day. Any other thoughts on e-mail management?
Great idea to implement a triage system before going away (and useful for cutting down on incoming traffic at any time).
One thing I do to streamline email replies is to use templates in my email signatures. I have one in each language to answer new queries about my rates and availability, and a couple more to answer emails about specific jobs (to confirm I can take a job or to apologise if I’m busy).
So many emails fly back and forth in the course of a project that I don’t feel guilty about sending out a standard one at the start of the exchange. And of course I use people’s names, because I know from experience that there’s nothing worse than getting an email that starts “Dear translator” 🙂
Thanks Emma! Those are all great tips; I really need to make better use of templates for standard replies. Having multiple templates is really brilliant!
One of the reasons I stick with Outlook is that it lets me drag an email to a task. My triage is as follows:
1. Delete emails I don’t want (with occasional fits of unsubscribing to reduce them)
2. Immediately answer ones that take only a minute or two, then file them away (this is your “one-touch” rule. Like Emma, I have templates in email signatures for common responses.
3. If it needs more time, it gets dragged to a task. I prefer this to making it a calendar item since my days can easily unravel (phone calls, sick kids…) and I could spend hours rescheduling if I tried to schedule my life. Tasks are things I can tick off, and they roll over to the next day if not completed.
Every Friday, I sort through my sent items (it’s a recurring task); that’s where the loose ends lie–the emails you sent that didn’t get a response. They get dragged back to the inbox for another round. I actually write myself emails with tasks and phone call notes to get them in the system!
At the end of every day, my inbox is empty, and I sleep well, knowing that nothing is at risk of getting lost.
Thanks Caitilin! Now *that* is a strategy that will get you elected President of ATA 🙂 But seriously, I think that approach is really brilliant, and I agree that the calendar approach is not effective. It’s too easy to say “answer old e-mail? didn’t get to that today, probably not tomorrow either!” but if you drag the e-mails to tasks, they are a lot harder to ignore. Thanks for the tip!!
I use a system a lot like Caitilin’s. If i can reply and handle immediately, I do. If I can read and delete, I do.
I also use Outlook and drag emails to turn them into tasks. I use Outlook’s rules to make email from certain associations, people, lists, etc, go straight to folders and bypass my inbox. I remove email from my inbox as soon as I have handled it. I often have an empty inbox at the end of weekdays.
I have separate inboxes for my business and personal email addresses.
I’m going to take a look at The Personal Efficiency Program. Thanks for the tip. I like getting new ideas all the time to help me tweak the system and improve it.