We all have a bad case of TMI, no not that kind, but really we just have too much information to deal with every day and its starts with the email inbox. Did you know that most professionals spend about 13 hours a week dealing with email?
Here are some tips to cut through that clutter and get on with getting things done:
- Batch it, and tackle it get instead of just constantly checking your email set up a time or several times a day that you will specifically work on email. For instance on days that I'm in the office I check my email once an hour.
- Turn off the notifications, did you know every time you hear the "you've got mail" alert it takes your brain 1 minuted to fully get back to what your doing even if you don't go look.
- Write simple direct responses, I know I go pretty crazy myself with long responses on occasion. Keep the responses short and to the point. If it appears there is going to be a lot of back and forth maybe you just need to pick up the phone, or schedule a meeting.
- Use specific subject lines! being in IT the IT support business we get a lot of emails with subject like "computer trouble" or sometimes even just "HELP" Those are worthless to us and just slow our dispatch triage process down and now they have to go in and read the whole message, and then create a correct subject. It would be much more useful if the the sender had sent a message with a subject along the lines of "Cant print to color printer" or can"t access Hosted Quickbooks. Keep in mind people want to scan their inbox by subjects so make that count think of it as a short tweet even!
- Consider ditching Subfolders, I did this a long time ago the power of inbox search (on those good subject lines), or by user is much faster than trying to file items into folders, which I find to be a time consuming, and painful process. I mean think about it you are using a computer, and your email is a database so use the power of the query!
- Opt of out unnecessary messaging, make sure you not getting notifications from Linked in or Facebook etc. Those are different places you can go jump into that stream at any time you don't need to clutter up your email. Unsubscribe for Newsletters that you don't read or at least delete them if your not going to read them you know your not going to go back so why keep it! (don't unsubscribe from my newsletter though its one you should read)
- Make sure your using an email servers that helps you keep your mail synced across all your devices. Use a Hosted Exchange Server, Gmail, or office 365.
So some of these deal with your own inbox, and some deal with etiquette help others deal with their inbox, and overall help everyone deal with their daily dose of TMI. Feel free to email me brian@albrightnetworks.com for help with your email overload we provide all of the services in the last bullet.
