10 tips to help you manage your emails!
Here are a few tips to managing emails so you reduce stress and spend an appropriate and useful amount of time on e-mails!
1. Put a hold on reading those email for 30 minutes every day. It is important to figure out your day first instead of getting sucked into reading all of those emails and then that dictating your day.
2. Limit the amount of time on your e-mails. Time yourself for 15 minutes or listen to one song…whatever works for you. Be efficient with the use of your time while you are reading your emails.
3. Use 1 minute or less to deal with any one email. This mean what you can do to extract the information, respond to the problem or reply. When you are done with that email, delete it and move on!
4. Just as with paper mail, the best control over e-mail is to deal with it the first time you read it-at least to get it to a “next step.” Sometimes the old rule of “touch it once” is just not feasible. If it is more time-consuming than what you have time for at the moment, place a flag on it and know that you will have to return to it when you have more time.
5. Turn off the “you have mail” buzzer or message. It breaks your concentration and you lose time.
6. Set up e-mail file folders. Like a “to do” list, folders give you actions to take on groups of emails.
7. Use “archiving” if your email program has that feature.
8. Use email setting to automatically delete “old” and “sent” mail after 30-45 days.
9. I like to set up “rules” for certain emails so they go directly to a file folder in Outlook! They are not e-mails that I need to read every day, but they are articles that I need to spend time reading when I have time.
10. And finally, “remove,” “remove,” remove” yourself from emails that you are just going through and deleting because you don’t have time to read. You can always sign back up if you have a burning desire to receive the information again, but more than likely you will never miss those emails!
Happy E-mails! Bridges