The Email Monster

When I was thinking about the first post to this blog the first thing that came to mind was email. I mean for all the many benefits that email has provided us it can still be a real productivity pest, eating into our time and keeping us from doing the really important things.

Think about this scenario – you arrive at the office with about twelve things to do that day, one of them being to check your email. You start with checking your email but as you are doing so and replying to those that came in between the previous night and that morning more come in and by the end of the day the only thing you have really managed to get done is your email. How do you control this scenario and ensure that you do get everything done on time?

A number of productivity experts have suggested only checking your email once a day but if you are anything like me then this may seem just a little unrealistic. Still, whatever we do it is obvious that somehow we need to learn to control the email pest. Here are some tips I would like to suggest:

1. Set rules to automatically sort emails into folders. By automatically sorting emails into relevant folders before you even see them, you will be able to work out which emails you actually need to attend to and what different emails are about. This way you can leave less important emails for when you really have time for it.

2. Use strict spam controls. Get everything that appears even vaguely like spam to your email program to be placed in your junk mail folder and then once a day quickly scan through this folder and empty it.

3. Get people to give you more precise subject lines in their emails. The subject line should tell you exactly what the email is going to be about and how important it is. The more you train people to do this when sending you emails the quicker you will be able to sort through your emails.

4. Limit the amount of time you spend replying to emails. Whether you spend half and hour or two hours a day replying to emails, the important thing is to control this amount of time and limit it to what you can actually afford in your day.

5. Use RSS Readers and Blog readers to get your news and research rather than email newsletters.

If you really want to become more productive and get the most out of each day then you need to learn to tame the email monster. By following the above steps you should be able to save a lot of time going through your emails each day and leave more time for your other activities.