Dealing With Your E-mail

Oh yikes!

That's probably the response a lot of us have to our e-mail inboxes, right?

So what can you do about it?

Here's some suggestions, particularly for business and office e-mails.

First, what can you do about sending e-mails in the first place? (Get everyone in the office to follow this)

• keep them short and sweet - so that the main point of the e-mail can be read in 15 seconds or less
• fit as much of the message into the subject line as possible (ie, meeting dates, times and locations)
• when responding to e-mails, change the subject line to reflect the main content of the e-mail (it's frustrating to try and find a particular e-mail when there are 10 of them in your inbox with the same subject line)
• if you need a longer e-mail - send the information as an attachment or summarize the main points at the top of the e-mail.

What about dealing with incoming mail?

• first of all, shut off the e-mail reminder that pops up whenever you get an e-mail - that is distracting and a great way to waste time
• schedule only a few times a day to deal with e-mails and then do it all at once

How do you process your e-mails?

• if it's junk, delete it immediately
• do I need to do anything about this e-mail right now?
• if no, either delete it, put it in an action file, or in a reference file.
• if yes, and it takes less than 2 minutes, do it right away
• if it will take more than two minutes, decide what your next action step is and file it accordingly - put it in your calendar, delegate it, or add it to an action list for later.