This is the fourth post in the series “How to Defeat Your Digital Mess Forever“.
Dealing with e-mail is something I’ve learned about over the past two years only by actually having had to tackle an amount inflow that needed dealing with. Unless you’ve ever been in that situation before, where you seem to have lost track of tasks because your e-mail inbox has become a pot-pourri of Facebook notifications, bills, university notifications, party invitations and homework group assignments.
The idea of becoming super-nimble in handling this daily avalanche is to pull together the necessary information and eliminate the unnecessary. Let me make a few assumptions about your e-mail world:
- You have at least two e-mail accounts, one being your private address, the other being your university address.
- You get regular notifications from social networking sites.
- Your e-mail inbox is in many ways your task list.
But let’s tackle this in a more pragmatic, day-to-day manner, shall we?
Reducing Incoming Streams
One big idea that the pundits often don’t talk about much is that it might not be our system that’s the problem, it’s the kind and quality of information we’re confronted with every day.
How many of the messages in your inbox right now are actually relevant to you? Which ones actually have a role in you achieving your goals?
Here’s some starters to reduce the amount of noise straight away.
- Unsubscribe from all unwanted newsletters: I developed an instinct to go hunting after that “Unsubscribe” Link in the next newsletter you get. In fact, go to your e-mail inbox right now and check the first 30 messages for such unsubscribable sources of rubbish.
- Take control of Facebook: One of the biggest culprits of an overflowing inbox is Facebook. By default, FB is set to send you an e-mail everytime one of your friends fart. Put your fist down and go to your Settings > Profile Settings > Notifications tab and stop the folly.
- Use Filters: Alternatively, create a filter (or smart folder) for Facebook in your e-mail application to automatically tunnel those messages to a separate folder. I do this, and then check that folder once every few days to keep up with the buzz. Filters are generally a good idea to separate automated e-mail from real humans.
Set Your Processing Time
Regardless of whether you constantly check e-mail, or only twice a day, make a clear commitment with yourself when you will actually deal with e-mail. I admit: I sometimes just read through my e-mail knowing perfectly that I will have to sort through it again, properly processing each message one by one. This is basically what David Allen would call “Emergency Scanning Mode”.
The idea is have set times that you will process E-Mail (say, three or four times a day) that will let you stay focused on work and not worry about sudden emergencies. I’ve also made it quite clear to colleagues that if issues get urgent, I’m available via phone or IM.
Unify Your Inbox
Assuming you have two or more e-mail accounts, consider these tips:
- Forward your university e-mail to another address: I have set my university address to forward to my private e-mail. This way, I only have to check one inbox, and I don’t use the university address to send messages, even if only by mistake. The idea here is that I want people to be able to reach me via the standard university directory, but I don’t want friends and family to start getting confused about where to send me messages.
- Maintain Folders to separate University from the rest: I have a reference folder quite different from what I’m using with regular files. Maybe I’ll switch, but right now I’m comfortable organising my folders by areas of responsibility. That means I have a reference folder with subfolders for my family life, for university, for each extracurricular activity, and for my personal administration of bills and similar things.
Procces like a Pro
The key to properly tackling lots of e-mail is to aim for an empty inbox. Tackle each message, one by one, and ask yourself: “What is this, and what is my commitment to this?”. The result should be that you’ve either noted the task, calendared the event, filed the message or trashed it (or a combination of those) and can basically forget about the message. I hit the delete key on messages almost 60% of the time.
Lightsabre your messages: It’s a slightly far-fetched allegory, but I think of e-mail messages as gunshots by an imperial soldier from star wars. My job is to fend off each message with a light-sabre with as much agility and nimbleness as I can.
That said, treat each message as a fly on your nose, waiting to get slapped away.
Answer concisely: Before answering messages, make a minute for some quick thoughts:
- Will the recipient have to act on your message?
- Can he/she act with another simple e-mail reply?
- Are you simply informing, or are you requesting a decision?
Use e-mail conventions within the first few words of a message. “FYI” if you’re only informing, “Decision / Action required” for messages of that nature and “Reply Requested” or “RR” for messages that need to be replied to.
If it can be said in a sentence, use the sbject line, and end with “(EOM)” for “end of message” or a simple “//”. Don’t worry if people don’t get it at first, I started using this one day, and surprisingly, a few days later people in my study group, at the workplace and at home caught on. Just do it.
5 More Resources to Sharpen the Saw
- How to Keep E-Mail From Wasting Your Time (Scott H. Young)
- Got 2 Extra Hours for Your E-Mail? (New York Times)
- Merlin Mann’s Inbo Zero articles
- Tim Ferriss’ E-Mail Detox posts
