Email Management - How To Avoid The Stress Of An Overflowing Inbox

Online, March 21, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Smart and effective email management is an essential skill for any manager to acquire. Without it you will spend your day reacting to the contents of your inbox, and you won't be very productive.

This will inevitably lead to you taking more and more 'real' work home with you, because you just can't get it all done in the office - neither a realistic, nor a sensible long-term solution!

The article below is from the wonderful Mind Tools website. It provides some simple, easy-to-implement strategies for managing email. If you take the time to learn and implement these strategies it will massively increase your productivity and decrease your stress levels.

Please don't make the mistake of dismissing these strategies as being too simplistic.

Managing Email Effectively (Strategies for Taming Your Inbox):

Checking Email
Checking your email regularly during the day can be an effective way to keep your inbox at manageable levels. However, the constant interruption and distraction that comes from multitasking in this way can dramatically lower your productivity, and disrupt your ability to enter a state of flow when working on high value projects.

Check Email at Set Times
One strategy you can use is to check email only at set points during the day. For instance, you may decide that you'll only check your email first thing in the morning, before lunch, and at the end of the day.

Here, it helps to set your email software to "receive" messages only at certain times, so that you're not distracted by incoming messages. If you can't do this, at least make sure that audible and visual alerts are turned off.

When to Check Email
You can also reserve time to read and respond to email after a long period of focused work, or at the time of day when your energy and creativity are at their lowest (this means that you can do higher value work at other times).

If you're concerned that your colleagues, boss, or clients will be annoyed or confused that you're not responding to their email quickly, explain that you only check email at certain times, and that they can call you or use instant messaging if the matter is really urgent.

Note: Clearly, in some roles, you will have to check email on a regular basis, especially if your business uses email as its main communication tool. As with all of these strategies, use your judgment, based on your circumstances.

Reading Email
When it comes to reading email, you can waste hours if you don't use this time intelligently.

The Two-Minute Rule
First, try using the "Two-Minute Rule" (a concept from David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done) - if the email will take less than two minutes (a quick read, and a short answer) then take care of it right now, even if it's not a high priority.

The idea behind this is that if it takes less than two minutes to action, then reading and then storing the task away "to do later" takes longer than it would to just take care of the task now.

Schedule Time
For emails that will take longer than two minutes to read or respond to, schedule time on your calendar, or add this as an action on your To-Do List, to do later.

Most email programs will allow you to highlight, flag, or star messages that need a response, so utilize this handy feature whenever you can.

Tip: Many of us also get lots of internal notifications. These are those "FYI" emails from the corporate office or team members who want to keep us "in the loop." If you see your name in the "cc" field instead of the "To" field, chances are it's an FYI email. Consider filing it in a "To Read" folder, and tackle it when you have time.

Visit the link below to read the full article:

http://www.managementnuggets.com/2011/03/email-management-how-to-avoid-stress-of.html