Managing Email Stress
- Author: Nicky
- Filed under: Customers, Email, Good Practice
May 14,2008
I can’t be the only person out there who sighs at the size of her inbox every morning!
Being efficient on email is tricky for me because I get such a large volume of email email day, and I spend a large chunk of most days in meetings. It’s especially tricky if I’ve had a day off.
Here’s some tricks of the trade I’ve employed over the years to help reduce my email stress, and improve my customer service.
Leave only unattended emails in your inbox.
As soon as you’ve replied to an email, forwarded it to a colleague for action or talked about the contents in a phone call, move it out of your inbox. Either file it, or put it in a quick To Be Filed folder for processing later.
Don’t use your inbox as a task list.
As soon as you check your email, check for the ones which require you to do something which will take time, and put these on your task list.
Upgrade to Outlook 2007.
If you’re still on Outlook 2003, upgrade as soon as possible. Outlook 2007 has outstanding and superior search capability which is far quicker than it’s predecessors. This means if you need to find an email pronto, you can, no hassles. I’ve run Outlook 2007 since June 2007 and am very happy with it.
BCC follow ups.
If you know you want to follow up an email you sent, BCC yourself a copy as you send it. Leave this in your inbox until you receive a reply, and then file the reply and the BCC when you’re done.
24h turnaround.
We all inevitably get phone calls and follow up emails if we don’t get back to people quickly. I aim for a 24h turnaround with all emails to avoid the time wasting follow ups and embarrassing apologies. I am in the technology business after all, if anyone can reply to an email quickly, you’d hope it’s be me!
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6 Responses for "Managing Email Stress"
I HATE my inbox every morning. It scares me to death. I quickly loose patience with those people who think they can use my email address for what ever they want. Mostly I delete their totally random and eclectic mail without even opening it.
I’ve been using an automated newsletter and broadcast list that people have to opt into and can cancel at any time….I wish a few other people in our area would use the same process!!!!
Andrew Griffiths has given you a nice little write up over on his blog
Go the Cairns bloggers.
Great tips Nicky!
Another strategy is to not check your emails every 5 minutes. I find that increasing the time between automatic “Send and Receive” increases my productivity as I’m not distracted by new emails (and therefore new tasks) coming in. I set aside small blocks of my day to check emails and follow them up. If you spend all day checking and replying to emails you will have the sensation that they are never-ending.
It’s 11:30am and I’m still not finished processing my morning emails. I’m right there with you Megan!
He’s such a nice man that Andrew Griffiths. He wrote lovely things about me too
You’re right Bee – new emails are a distraction. We forget about this little popup distraction too, and it’s a sheepish following to go check what we just received. Can you imagine how annoyed we’d be if instead of emails it was phone calls!
Also, configure rules/filters to automatically deal with emails that are not critical, e.g. newsletters, mailing lists, suspect spam, or anything delivered to an email address that is not your primary one. Then you can review emails in these folders less frequently.
[...] Managing Email Stress-Nicky Jurd Sometimes, though we know what needs to be done on a project, the next course of action can be difficult to discern. The author of this article gives readers 5 helpful tips that allow a person to organize the way he or she deals with large volumes of email. [...]
[...] Managing Email Stress-Nicky Jurd Sometimes, though we know what needs to be done on a project, the next course of action can be difficult to discern. The author of this article gives readers 5 helpful tips that allow a person to organize the way he or she deals with large volumes of email. [...]
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