By Holly Uverity, CPO®, Office Organizers
Technology was supposed to make our business lives easier, less stressful, and more productive. With the advent of smartphones, the opposite has happened and our business lives have bled into our personal lives. No longer do we work 40 or even 50 hours a week; because we have access to information 24/7, we’re working 24/7. Conventional wisdom used to say that you need to stay connected to your clients, to your industry, and even to your competitors in order to stay ahead. We believed that the immediacy of email would allow us to accomplish more in less time and work “smarter, not harder”. Conventional wisdom, as it turns out, wasn’t so wise.
Business people whose inboxes are overrun with email now recognize that it’s not the liberating force it was touted to be and is, in fact, their jailer. It can keep people tied to their gadgets and isolated from their families and friends. While email is truly a wonder and allows us to connect in ways never before thought of, it’s important to remember that it is only another tool to be managed correctly.
Managing your email is actually pretty simple; it’s just a matter of shifting how you perceive it and how you interact with it. Remember, you’re in charge.
Here are some guidelines to get you started in the right direction:
- Disregard the method of delivery; treat your email as if it came to you via interoffice mail and not electronically. The method of delivery is not important, it’s the information you need, so respond to the information appropriately and don’t respond to the method of delivery. Simply because you can answer immediately doesn’t mean you should.
- Resist the urge to check your email first thing in the morning; give yourself anywhere from 30-60 minutes of “email free” time each morning. Focus instead on being proactive and taking care of something that’s on your To Do list.
- Decide to make a decision; making daily decisions about where your emails go and how you’re going to manage them keeps them from stacking up in your inbox. Decide to check your emails at certain times of the day only; decide to create rules to divert specific emails to folders; decide to unsubscribe to ezines and newsletters you don’t read.
- Say what you need; create subject lines that have meaning. Tell your recipients what you need or don’t need in the subject line. Agree on standardized verbiage such as “FYI Only”, “Action Required”, or “Response Needed by August 15, 2014”.
- Delete the email from your inbox once it has been handled. If you need to keep it for a reference, move it to another email folder or save it in another format in the appropriate folder on your computer. If you print the email, file the paper and delete the email.
- Sort your emails by sender, by date, or by topic to make it easier to work through them. Change the subject line of an email to reflect what you need to do. If there are emails in your inbox that require your action, add the word “Action” to the beginning of the subject line of each of those emails and then sort by subject. All your “Action” emails will then be together.
- Use the FAT System® on a daily basis. There are only three things you can do with any piece of information that comes into your office – File it, Act on it, or Toss it. Use this FAT System® to methodically clear out the e-clutter each day.
- Be a part of the solution and not a part of the problem. No one likes an inbox filled with jokes, YouTube videos, and political tirades. Don’t forward those types of emails to your friends and ask that they not forward them to you. Alternatively, you can set up a separate email account to receive personal emails so they don’t clutter your work inbox.
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Office Organizers, founded in 1993 by Holly Uverity, is The Entrepreneur’s Organizer. They work with business people to create solutions for their organizational challenges. You can contact them by phone at 281-655-5022 or visit them on the web at www.OfficeOrganizers.com. “Like” them on Facebook at www.fb.com/OfficeOrganizers.
