Thursday, June 26, 2008

Your "In"box part1

How many emails do you receive a day? How many in a week, month, year? Probably lots. How do you process your emails? Do you have a system that helps you do it in an efficient way?

I have worked with many people one-on-one in their time management. Email is an area I focus on with EVERYONE. Why? Because EVERYONE I know spends a lot of time processing emails. Some process emails continually through the day. Others set certain times during the day to do it. Beyond that though, ask yourself one simple question:

Does your "In"box sometimes work as your "Indecision"box?

How many emails are currently in your inbox that have been in there since the last time you processed emails? How many have been in there since last week?! It's likely that if there are many like that, they are still there because you cannot make a decision on what to do with them or you are using your inbox for something else ... as a ToDo box or a I'll do it later box. In any case it has lost its real intention of being an input box. Now when emails stay in there, they are being re-processed by your brain continuously every time you open up your email. This leads to stress and inefficiency. Do something crazy today. Process all your emails.

To be continued.....

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Email management is very important, and I wish there could be a one size fits all approach to teaching it, but there is not. Key is to communicate first and foremost. You need to learn how a person individually thinks and processes before you can help them manage email.