This article by Meggin McIntosh, “The Ph.D. of Productivity”™ and Paper Tiger Expert, will help you implement a system to get and keep your email under control! Meggin also recommends Paper Tiger. Click here to check out Meggin’s webinar that will help you better understand Paper Tiger Filing System Software for document management to be able to use the software more effectively and see how you can get organized in every area of your life — not just paper filing! Meggin does an awesome job in showing you pictures of all of the different things she has organized and relating those items back to what she has indexed in Paper Tiger.
When people first started receiving email, it was exciting! On any day when you got an email you thought, “Oh, I got an email!” Then, when you got about five emails a day you could still be pretty darn thrilled. But now that you’re at the point of receiving 100 to 150 emails a day or more (and many, many executives get far more than that), it’s just not quite as thrilling, is it?
This high number of daily emails does not include spam or the other ridiculous emails that you have filters to screen out. So to rephrase this number and its impact, consider this: Most professionals today receive over a hundred potentially-actionable emails every day. Given this, let’s just say that the excitement about receiving email has probably subsided for most of us, right? Here are some ideas to help you reduce the overall number of emails that even show up in your in-box:
Establish rules or ‘policies.’ In this case, I’m not referring to ‘email rules’ that are set within your email management program. Rather, I recommend that you establish and discuss rules or “policies” in your company or organization. For example:
Out-of-office replies: Determine that these will be used sparingly, if at all. When people are going to be out of the office for about 30 minutes and they set up their email to send “I’m out of the office,” my first thought is, ‘You’re not that important.’ My second thought is, ‘How many people are receiving this extra email for no reason?’ If someone is going to be out of the country for a month, then maybe they need to send an “Out of office” reply. If many companies, agencies, or universities determined that the ‘best practice’ is NOT to broadcast “Out of office” replies, it would almost halve the number of emails that were sent and received.
Other related policies: Is it alright at your organization for people to send recipes, cartoons, YouTube clips? Is that something you think companies are paying people to do? Usually the answer is no, and an extraordinary amount of time, energy, and organization resources are spent on that. I think companies, schools, departments, and other work units need to talk about this to set a policy. It’s not that you’re putting a clamp on people, but it is acknowledging , “We’re paying you to be here 3, 8, 9, 10 hours and this is not coffee klatch. We’re trying to get some work done here.” Other times companies don’t care what people do, but I think folks need to consider that.
Another area is related to political emails and the like. Recently, NPR had a discussion about the political season that recently ‘passed’ and how many organizations needed to establish email policies about whether or not people can send out requests using the company or the organization’s email for attending fundraisers or for other promotional materials. Not only is it divisive, but it’s spending an awful lot of time doing those kinds of things and it may result in people not only getting less work done – but developing some animosities that prevent collegial work.
Sometimes, as an individual, you need to request that people stop sending you particular kinds of emails. You can send out an email or talk with them individually to ask, “Please don’t add me to your chain letters, cartoon list, prayer chains, jokes. I don’t want all those additional emails.” Decide what it is you don’t want and then ask people to respect your request. You can start this rather subtly by adding an email signature for a little while, saying, “I appreciate it if everybody will take me off their lists.” Then other times you just have to ask people directly. If people insist, then set up a rule in your email that their stuff immediately goes into the deleted folder.
And lastly, if you want to receive fewer emails, then send fewer emails. We all need to ask ourselves when we’re getting ready to send an email whether we really need to send it. What research indicates is for every five emails you send, at least three of them either require or will elicit a response. If you do the numbers on this, it looks like this:
Let’s say you normally send 100 emails, which means that from what you’re sending you’re going to get back 60 emails. What if you cut it in half, for heaven’s sakes, and only sent 50? That’s going to take you less time to send 50 than to send 100 and you’re only going to get back 30. Do you see the math on that? Remember, just ask yourself when you’re getting ready to send an email, “Do I really need to send this?” because so many emails are going to increase the likelihood that someone is going to write us back. We don’t necessarily want that, but it’s going to happen.
You want to be able to attend carefully and thoughtfully to your email – and to the rest of your job. Curtail the appearance of as many emails as possible using the suggestions in this article. It makes a noticeable difference.
And to keep moving forward on your goals for more peaceful productivity – related to email and other ideas for the professional, join others (worldwide) who receive Meggin’s weekly emails (and see what is available for download at no cost at the following websites):
About Meggin McIntosh
Meggin McIntosh, Ph.D., “The Ph.D. of Productivity”(tm). Through her company, Emphasis on Excellence, Inc., Meggin McIntosh supports smart people who want to be more productive so that they can consistently keep their emphasis on excellence.
Emphasis on Excellence, Inc.
Email: meggin@meggin.com
Phone: 775.853.5510
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Tags: emails, get organized, Productivity, productivity expert, professional organizer
