Marsha Egan, executive coach and author, offers tips on how to reduce your e-mail cyber-stack.
By Pam George
Picture yourself outside at your mailbox, sifting through bills, circulars and catalogues. Do you pocket the bills and stash the rest of the mail back in the box? Not if you want to stay in the post office’s good graces. Yet, that is precisely what many of us do with e-mail everyday. “People use their inbox as a holding tank for their mail,” says Marsha Egan, executive coach and author of the e-book Help! I’ve Fallen into my Inbox and Can’t Climb Out!
AN INBOX FULL OF E-MAIL INVITES DISTRACTION.
Not only do we spend too much time perusing old messages, but we also lose correspondence in the cyber-stack. E-mail has evolved so quickly that organizing consultants are scrambling to develop management tools. “I have clients lament that e-mail is bogging them down,” Egan says.
The trick is to manage e-mail instead of letting it manage you, says Manny Avramidis, senior vice president of global human resources for the American Management Association. First, treat your e-mail inbox just like your postal mailbox. Retrieve and remove your mail each day.
You’ll also need a new mind-set when it comes to reading messages. “Studies show that when people are interrupted from a task, it can take up to four minutes to return to that task,” says Alicia Rockmore, cofounder of Buttoned Up, a manufacturer of organization products. “If you stop to view 30 e-mails each time a new one arrives, you’ll lose up to two hours of productivity each day.”
Egan recommends turning off your computer’s chime and setting the e-mail retrieval system at a longer interval, perhaps 90 minutes. Then, schedule regular times throughout the day to quickly review incoming mail. When reviewing e-mail, work from top to bottom. “Don’t noodle,” Egan says. “Don’t pick which ones you want to work on.”
ALLOT TWO MINUTES PER E-MAIL.
If you can handle the message in less than two minutes, do so. Create folders for messages that require more time. Move priority items, for instance, into a folder labeled “Action A.” “Action B” is for less-urgent items. Egan also suggests a “Pending” file if you’ve taken action but are waiting for a response. “Reference” folders are for information you might need in case information you have is questioned.
Keep the folder system simple and manageable, says Rockmore, who has about 10 folders for work and five for personal matters. “Otherwise, you’ll spend all your time searching and scrolling to find the right folder,” she says.
Some prefer to keep messages and attachments intact. Others save attachments to a program such as Microsoft
Word. If you detach the file, save it with the same heading or keyword so you can easily find both.
It is not enough to drag messages into action folders; you must act on them. At some point—perhaps in the morning—go through the action and pending folders, as well as snail mail, to organize your day.
EXPEDITE THE PROCESS FURTHER BY USING THE RULES FUNCTION ON YOUR E-MAIL PROGRAMS.
For example, you can tell the system to automatically dump trade association newsletters into the “Reading” folder. No more dragging and dropping. You can also create a folder for personal messages, so you won’t be tempted to read them during the workday.
Unsubscribing from lists will also keep your inbox clutter-free. “At one point I was getting 10 e-mails a day from Daily Candy,” Rockmore recalls. “I was reading only two.”
The American Management Association urges employees to question their inclusion in group e-mails, Avramidis says. Likewise, carefully consider your own address lists. The more people you copy on an e-mail, the more likely you are to get a response from each one. “Once we start to build a culture where e-mail is viewed seriously, we can reduce unnecessary inbox traffic,” he says.
Whatever approach you take, make sure it works with your habits. “You need to customize our advice so that it suits your life,” Egan concludes.
