Email is notoriously overused, especially at the office. Something that would take 5 minutes over the phone, may only take you 2 minutes to email, but leaves the responder with the arduous task of interpreting and answering what is often a very open-ended question. But even more often, we email when it would be much faster to call someone or walk over to their desk. Check out this interesting concept of 5 sentence emails.Â
Simplify your email, simplify your day, stress less:
Junk or not? Some emails are easily identified as junk. Trash those immediately and first thing. Action right now! Glance over all your emails briefly to see if there’s anything from the boss or some other important being like that. Open those first. Then look at the others and act on each as soon as you open it. Decide if it should be trashed, filed or responded to. Quick or not? Can you respond in a few sentences? Do so right away.  Even if you can’t fully answer, a quick response will show you are available and on top of things. Will it take longer to respond? Label it “unread†and mark it down on your to-do list. Just information? Is the email just some stuff you need to read? Mark it on your to-do list or create a “Read†folder for later review. If you have a lot of these, create 2 folders “Read today†and “Read.†Resist the urge to check constantly. Check email first thing in the morning for urgent messages. If you have no pressing project to work on, go through the above steps. If you have something else that needs immediate attention, ignore the email except for the urgent ones. Set aside certain hours during the day when you check email – or check it on the hour if you feel the need. But don’t constantly flip back and forth between email and your work. Bonus tip! Rather than emailing, call the person, go see the person or schedule a quick meeting.
If you currently have too many emails to count, first make sure they are sorted by date. Then start with the oldest email first and apply the above techniques to make your box lose some weight. And learn that multitasking is not productive and decreases productivity!
See how easy it is? Now you just need to get into the habit. And anyone can break a habit!
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