Do Something! Manage Your Email Inbox

I read something recently that indicated that by 2009, workers will spend up to 41% of their time at work managing their email. (Is that really possible?!) Another survey conducted last year on behalf of Fuser.com, found that internet users spend approximately 7 hours each week managing email and social networking accounts. That's a significant amount of time. And it's even more if you're searching for important client emails or emails that contain information that you can't seem to find anywhere else.

Some tips for managing your email:

• Think about what kinds or categories of email you receive. Are your emails mostly 'conversational' or are they reminders to take a specific action? Don't let action emails get lost or buried;
• Create separate folders for client email and email that requires action;
• Set up rules and filters that will automatically place messages in the correct folder and help you to see at one glance whether you've got emails from clients that need to be addressed;
• If you get a lot of conversation-based email, you might want to sort your email by thread,  conversation or subject to help you follow the conversation, stay current and not repeat what others have already said;
• Know your priorities - which email relates to high value activities, clients or potential opportunities, and which email is less important? Deal with high value emails first;
• Change subject lines of emails to better reflect the topic being discussed and for easier sorting and searching in the future;
• As you go through your emails on a regular basis, you may have some information that you want to save simply for reference purposes or for review later. Categorize those emails the same way you'd categorize the information if it was on paper - separate it into folders and/or save it elsewhere on your computer, but get it out of your inbox.
• Once you've sorted important emails into folders, saved them to the client file and deleted them from your inbox, you'll probably still have a lot of emails left over. Sort by date and delete the old ones which are probably the least important anyway;
• Create a schedule for reviewing and deleting email on a regular basis.

Comments

[robert fligel]

I enjoyed your post and must confess that I, like many, spend too much of my day "working off of email". Part of the reason is being conditioned to think that customer service and response time is expected to be asap. In the vast majority of cases, I know that isn't really necessaryand it would be quite possible to check email just a few times per day.

Let me share a tool I do find very powerful for desktop searching of emails. I use this quite often each day to quickly find information. You can search by date, sender, receiver, subject, contacts, attachments, key words and more. This is the one I use and I am sure there are others. Major time saver!

http://us.config.toolbar.yahoo.com/yds

Please visit my blog at
http://www.rf-resources.com/index.php/site/blog/

[Ben Glass]

Here's a great book:

The Hamster Revolution

One of the big important points it makes is to train your email correspondents. Tell them how and when to email you. Seriously..

One training tip is, if an email is very short and answers or asks a question that can be done all in the subject line, put (EOM) at the end of the subject line

For example, an email that answers a question posed to you might say

Subj: "Yes, pleading was filed Thurs. (EOM)"

this way the recipient knows they don't even have to open the email. In fact, if they do open it, they won't find any message since teh entire message is contained in the subject line.

This all goes back to what I call "militant time management." Who are what are you letting into your life right this movement.

Frankly, if you feel stressed by not having enough time to get things done, it's time to call "time-out" and evaluate your life.

Another great book is Dan Kennedy's No. B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs.

Also, Tim Ferriss' Four Hour Work Week.

Ben Glass
www.BenGlassLaw.com
www.GreatLegalMarketing.com