My clients usually list "managing email" as their number one distraction or barrier to productivity on a day-to-day basis!
You may think that me, being a Certified Professional Organizer®, I would have an elaborate system of virtual file folders to sort and archive all of my email.
But, my system for processing the daily flood of emails is fairly simple and I am ready to share!
This system won't work for everyone but for me, and most of my one-to-one clients it works just fine. After they've been using this method for a few weeks, I check in with them. When I follow-up my clients usually say things like: "I feel totally in control and on top of my email inbox now." They claim that they feel an overall clamminess and focus throughout their workday. They also feel unleashed from their email checking addiction.
But, I have been known to upset some people in
my live workshops with these suggestions. They just can't seem to
embrace the fact that email was never meant to be an urgent
form of communication and they feel the need to constantly check their
email (if you are interested on this topic there is more on my blog post
called: "Are You A Insecurity Work Addict?") and they tend to have
their email program open all day will all the bells, whistles and pop-up
notifications jolting them out of focus.
Now, I know some jobs require that you respond to email all day and that is in fact in your job description. Or, you may have a job in finance or real estate where the response time or the time where you would need to take action on an email is accelerated. But, for most of us - no one is going to die or loose any revenue from our businesses if we don't instantly respond to email. If a matter is that urgent, you'd probably receive a phone call about it anyway, right?
So, here is how I personally set up my email and how I process it:
You may think that me, being a Certified Professional Organizer®, I would have an elaborate system of virtual file folders to sort and archive all of my email.
But, my system for processing the daily flood of emails is fairly simple and I am ready to share!
This system won't work for everyone but for me, and most of my one-to-one clients it works just fine. After they've been using this method for a few weeks, I check in with them. When I follow-up my clients usually say things like: "I feel totally in control and on top of my email inbox now." They claim that they feel an overall clamminess and focus throughout their workday. They also feel unleashed from their email checking addiction.
Now, I know some jobs require that you respond to email all day and that is in fact in your job description. Or, you may have a job in finance or real estate where the response time or the time where you would need to take action on an email is accelerated. But, for most of us - no one is going to die or loose any revenue from our businesses if we don't instantly respond to email. If a matter is that urgent, you'd probably receive a phone call about it anyway, right?
So, here is how I personally set up my email and how I process it:
