by Celes | | Email this post

Emailing has become a central modes of our communication today, both at home and at work. Looking back ten years ago, it’s kind of hard to imagine this. Ten years ago, email was a complete novelty. I still remember I got my first PC then . Today, email has completely transformed into a staple.

Email Management = Fake Productivity?

While email is intended to facilitate communication, I suspect it is killing the productivity of most people. Do you often find yourself clicking into your inbox absent-mindedly, when you had just checked it only 5 minutes ago? Do you do a lot of email management activities, like searching past mails, sorting, organizing, deleting and the like? Do you spend more time typing/replying emails than getting proper tasks done?

If you answered yes to any of the questions, you are not alone. These applied to me last time.

In the past, I tied email management with my productivity levels. When I first started in my previous brand management job, I spent quite a copious amount of time in email management. Every time I finished clearing my emails, I would feel pretty satisfied with myself. This was the same when I started up my personal development business earlier this year.

However, I soon realized it was just fake productivity. Since I became self-employed, I was in the position to determine how and where I wanted to spend my time, and it became apparent that investing time into emails wasn’t doing much. While I was putting in a lot of effort, there was really nothing much accomplished. There are several reasons:

1. Deferring the real, important work

I hadn’t made any progress in my other, more intensive tasks, such as writing articles, site promotion, relationship building with key contacts. These were often the big rocks or Quadrant 2 tasks – tasks which were important but not urgent. Not only that, checking my mail midway through my work would break away my train of thought for whatever I was doing. When I returned to work, I would need to pick up my thoughts where I left off.

2. Deferring the email processing

I wasn’t getting anything much done for my emails either. Most of the time, I would just click around, glance through the new mails, sort through the stuff, then put off the replying to a later time.

3. Never an end to the emails

For the emails I do reply, more emails would keep streaming in, like a running tap. I could clear ten, but then twenty would come in immediately afterward.

Email is just a tool

Email is just a tool for you to get your tasks done. But when you make emailing your central focus, you are going to find yourself doing a lot of “empty” work. For example, a table is intended as a tool for you to do your work. However, if you are busy fussing over the table, its material, surface top, the height, and what not, you really aren’t getting anything done at all.

Come think of it, many of us use email as a form of escapism, whether we are conscious or unconscious of it. I was observing myself a few weeks ago and noticed that I would click over to my gmail when I was facing a mental block when writing my articles. If there’s a new mail in my inbox, I’d go read it and sidetrack from my task. If there isn’t any new mail, I’d return to my work but click back into my inbox five mins later.

After all, checking mails is easy – as compared to dealing with work. It’s brainless to just click around in your inbox whether you have new mails or not. If gmail had some kind of a tracking system on how many times someone checks his/her mail a day, mine would have amounted to an average of 5382 times a day.

The same applies for other lower-level tasks which didn’t require much brain activity, such as checking twitter updates, facebook, forums. I was never really addicted to any of these mediums but I suspect the others are. A lot of my ex-colleagues and friends seem to respond exceedingly fast on facebook, even during office hours. (if you guys are reading this, don’t worry – your secret is safe with me! )

Improve Your Email Management!

I have since tried and tested several methods to improve my email management. These have significantly cut down the time I spend on emails, which lets me focus on other more important things. If you spend a lot of time buried in your emails whether at work or for your personal mails, you might find these tips helpful.

By the way, I use gmail as my default email agent. Even then, majority of the functions mentioned below can be found in a decent email agent, so it shouldn’t be an issue.

1. Check and process your email only once a day.

If there’s only 1 tip that you walk away with from this post, let this be the one. Set aside a common time slot every day to check and process your emails. If you don’t finish doing that in the time slot, do it in the slot for the next day. Even if you receive tons of mails every day, it’s still possible to get this done -  just prioritize the more important ones and let go of the rest. If you don’t receive a lot of mail, reduce the frequency to once every few days.

I just started practicing this habit and it has raised my productivity tremendously. While I have important mails which require speedy attention, the world didn’t end when I started checking it only once a day (I fixed the time at 12 noon, to be precise). Seriously, if there’s anything that’s so important that it can’t wait, it will somehow find its way to you through other mediums (call, sms, etc). By restricting mail checking to just once a day, it has allowed me to streamline a lot of my email management activities. (see other tips below)

If you are in a working-level position where you receive a lot of time-sensitive emails, you can still put this into practice. Try restricting the email checking to 3-times a day or so. The point is not to let email run over your life. Remember, it’s a tool to help you do your work and not the work itself. Cultivate this as a habit via the 21 Day Trial Program.

2. Use an excellent spam detection system.

Gmail has quite an incredible spam detection system, so I never have much trouble dealing with spam. Occasionally 1-2 spam slips through the radar but it’s manageable when it happens.

3. Delete all spam and unrelated mail at one go.

Sometimes, no matter how many filters or spam detectors you set up, there will still be unrelated mail that get into your inbox. Just select all of them at one go (you should be able to tell whether a mail is worth a read just from the subject header) and delete them in one click.

4. Set up filters.

Generally, 2 basic things are required for a filter – (1) The term to look out for (2) Action to apply if the term is matched.  As of now, my gmail has about 30 different filters set up for different email addresses, subject titles, body text and what not. Depending on what filter it is, the mail will be automatically sorted into a respective folder / archived. This minimizes the amount of administrative actions I need to do.

5. Use folders.

Folders (or labels, if you use gmail) are there to help you organize your mail. I know some people who don’t use folders at all for their mails and they usually run into a fix when trying to find a past email. It’s important you set up a logical, user-friendly structure for your folders; else you will end up being confused about where your mail is. Using filters (tip # 2) to automatically organize your mails into folders works wonders.

6. Archive emails which you don’t have time to read.

I subscribe to a lot of different newsletters and set gmail to automatically archive them to different labels (folders). For example, blog development and marketing mails automatically get archived into the blog development folder, spirituality mails get archived into spirituality folder, and so on. As of now, I have about 26 folders. Rather than read these mails as and when their newsletters are sent out, I set aside specific time slots to go through them. For example, I block off 3 hours every Thurs morning to read-up on spirituality related materials. During this slot, I’ll read through all the mails and articles I’ve received on spirituality. By consolidating all my reading of a particular topic in one single time frame, it also creates synergy in terms of my understanding and self-application.

7. Use the 1 minute rule when replying.

If it takes within 1 minute to reply, reply to it immediately and archive it. Don’t let it sit in your mail box for ages. It’s going to take even more effort letting it hover around your mind and being constantly reminded that you need to reply. Just make sure you keep to the 1-minute time frame when replying so it does not take more time than needed. Whenever I do this, I can quickly clear a big batch of mails.

8. Create email templates.

Depending on what you do, you might find similarities in the email replies to different people. The mails I receive on my site can usually be classified in one of the few categories (1) thank you mails (2) coaching-related (3) speaking requests (4) feedback (5) other enquiries. For (1), (2), (3) and (4), I use templates which I have written before-hand which I use in my replies. As I reply, I would customize them accordingly to fit the needs of the original mail. This saved me huge amounts of time, compared to in the past when I would type emails from scratch.

9. Unsubscribe from things  you don’t read.

In your cruising around the web, you probably sign up for a fair share of newsletters and feeds on impulse which you lose interest in afterward. If you find yourself repeatedly deleting the mails from your subscriptions, it’s a cue that you should just unsubscribe immediately.

Try these tips and see how they work out for you.

This is part of the Cultivate Good Habits Series. Be sure to check out the full series:

This is part of the Cultivate Good Habits Series. Be sure to check out the full series:

1. 21 Days To Cultivate Life Transforming Habits
2. 21-Day Lifestyle Revamp Program
3. Waking Early: 21 Tips To Wake Up Early
4. Quitting Soda: 5 Reasons To Quit Drinking Soda (& How To Do It)
5. Improve Your Posture: Benefits Of A Good Posture (& 13 Tips To Do It)
6. Be TV-Free: 10 Reasons You Should Stop Watching TV
7. Being On Time: 17 Tips To Be On Time
8. Meditation: How To Meditate in 5 Simple Steps
9. Manage Emails Effectively: 9 Easy Steps To Effective Email Management
10. Run Barefoot: 10 Reasons You Should Start Running Barefoot
    

Filed in: Cultivate Habits, Productivity | Posted on Jun 14 2009