Sunday, May 28, 2006
Process and organize your e-mail to increase productivity
Contributed by McGhee Productivity Solutions
Do you have an effective way to process and organize your e-mail so that you can get to an empty Inbox on a routine basis? If you have lots of e-mail in your Inbox — we know people with as many as 7,000 messages — you might want to rethink your processing methods. Really, it is possible to empty your Inbox! The key is to evaluate how you are processing and organizing your e-mail and make some changes.
No doubt you've opened e-mail messages and thought, "Hmmm, not sure what to do with this. I'll deal with it later!" — and promptly closed the message. If you do this over and over again, it doesn't take long to end up with several hundred messages in your Inbox.
Developing a new approach to processing your Inbox will help you to gain more control, improve your response time, and keep up with critical actions and due dates.
Success factors for processing and organizing your e-mail
There are four key factors that will help you process your e-mail more efficiently:
- A simple and effective e-mail reference system
- Uninterrupted time to process e-mail
- A methodical system for processing items: one item at a time, starting at the top
- The "Four D's for Decision Making" model
Set up a simple and effective e-mail reference system
The first step toward an organized Inbox is understanding the difference between reference information and action information.
- Reference information is information that is not required in order to complete an action; it is information that you want to keep in case you need it later.
- Action information is information you must have in order to complete an action.
Most people receive a considerable amount of reference information through e-mail. So having a system that enables you to quickly transfer messages from your Inbox into your e-mail reference system is essential.
Note For more information about creating an effective e-mail reference system, see "Create an effective reference system" in the More information section of this article.
Schedule uninterrupted time to process and organize e-mail
How many interruptions do you experience each day? For many of us, every day is a series of interruptions with brief moments of concentration. But it's nearly impossible to complete anything when you allow constant interruptions from the phone, people stopping by your office, and instant messaging. Therefore, is it critical that you set aside time to process and organize your e-mail.
Establish a regular time
An excellent practice is to establish a regular time each day to process your e-mail so that you can empty your Inbox. Of course, you can scan your e-mail during the day for urgent messages or requests from your boss. But many e-mail messages require you to make a decision, and good decisions require focus, and focus requires uninterrupted attention. When you do the bulk of your processing during your scheduled e-mail processing time and not randomly throughout the day, you're a lot more able to focus — and therefore make good decisions.
Take a look at your calendar, and find a time when you're least likely to be interrupted or get meeting requests. Book yourself a recurring appointment for an hour a day to process e-mail, and mark it as "busy." During this time don't answer the phone or take interruptions, and work only on processing your Inbox.
At first, keeping these appointments with yourself will take discipline, but over time the discipline becomes habit. And once you get to zero e-mail in your Inbox, you'll see the value of this one hour a day and you'll stick to it like glue.
Process one item at a time, starting at the top
When you sit down to process your e-mail, the first step is to sort it by the order in which you want to process it. For example, you can filter by date, subject, or person.
If you use Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003, enable the preview pane so that you can view your messages without having to open them. (On the View menu, click AutoPreview.)Begin at the beginning
Resist the temptation to jump around in your Inbox in no particular order, going from one message to another, opening, closing, and occasionally deleting. Instead, begin your processing with the message at the top of your Inbox and only move to the second one after you've handled the first.
The "Four D's for Decision Making" model
The "Four D's for Decision Making" model (4 D's) is a valuable tool for processing e-mail, helping you to quickly decide what action to take with each item and how to remove it from the Inbox.
Decide what to do with each and every message
How many times have you opened, reviewed, and closed the same e-mail message over and over? Some of those messages are getting lots of attention but very little action! A better practice is to handle each e-mail message only once before taking action — which means you have to make a decision as to what to do with it and where to put it. Under the 4 D's model, you have four choices:
- Delete it
- Do it
- Delegate it
- Defer it
DELETE IT
McGhee Productivity Solutions (MPS) statistics confirm that on average, 50% of what you receive you can delete. That is a lot of unusable material. But some of you shudder when you hear the "delete" word. You're hesitant to delete messages for fear you might need them at some point. That's understandable, but ask yourself honestly: What percentage of information that you've kept do you actually use?
Some of you are using a large percentage of what you keep, in which case what you're doing is working. But it's likely that many of you are keeping a lot more than you use. The questions below might help you make more effective decisions about what to keep and what to delete.
- Does the message relate to a meaningful objective you're currently working on? If not, you can probably delete it. Why hang on to information that doesn't relate to your main focus?
- Does the message contain information you can find elsewhere (for example, on an internal or external Web site or another network resource)? If so, delete it.
- Does the message contain information that you will refer to within the next six months? If not, delete it.
- Does the message contain information that you're required to keep (for example, legal or human resources information that relates to your company)? If not, delete it.
Tip It's wise to familiarize yourself with your company's record retention policies. Most people are hanging on to information much longer than they are asked to.
DO IT (in less than two minutes)
If you can't DELETE IT, then you need to answer the questions, "What specific action do I need to take?" and "Can I DO IT in less than two minutes?" If you can, just DO IT.
You would be amazed at what you can accomplish in less than two minutes. You could file the message, you could respond to the message, and you could make a phone call. Really push yourself to find out what you can actually accomplish in less than two minutes. You'll surprise yourself.
MPS statistics confirm that on average you can get through 30% of your Inbox by handling e-mail messages in less than two minutes. That's a lot!
DELEGATE IT
If you can't DELETE IT or DO IT in two minutes or less, ask yourself, "Can I DELEGATE IT?" Statistics confirm that, on average, 10% of your e-mail messages can be delegated, but people often forget to ask that question and miss opportunities to delegate actions.
If you can delegate it, do it right away. See if you can compose and send the delegating message in less than two minutes. If it takes a bit longer, that's okay. The key is to ask yourself if you can delegate it to ensure you are using your time wisely.
Once you have delegated the action, delete the original message or move it into your e-mail reference system.
DEFER IT
If you cannot DELETE IT, DO IT in less than two minutes, or DELEGATE IT, then the action required is something that only you can accomplish and that will take more than two minutes. Because this is your dedicated e-mail processing time, you need to DEFER IT. MPS statistics confirm that, on average, 10% of your e-mail messages can be deferred.
Turn a deferred message into an actionable task
When you're using Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003, you can DEFER action by turning the message into a task. Name the task to clearly state what action is required so that you don't have to reopen the e-mail message to find out. The result is a clearly defined list of actions in your task list that you can prioritize and schedule for action.
To include attached files in the task
- In your Inbox, right-click the message that you want to move, hold down the mouse button, and drag the message to Tasks
in the Navigation Pane.The Navigation Pane is column on the left side of the Outlook window that includes panes such as Shortcuts or Mail and the shortcuts or folders within each pane. Click a folder to show the items in the folder.
- Release the mouse button, and on the shortcut menu, click Move Here as Task with Attachment.
- In the task window, type a description of the task in the Subject box, and then click Save and Close.
To include just the e-mail message in the task
- In your Inbox, click the message that you want to turn into a task, and drag it to Tasks
- In the task window, type a description of the task in the Subject box, and then click Save and Close.
Turn a deferred message into an appointment
If you know ahead of time that you need to respond to the message in the next couple of days and that will take 30 minutes to prepare a response, you can turn the message directly into an Outlook appointment.
- In your Inbox, right-click the message that you want to move, hold down the mouse button, and drag the message to Calendar
in the Navigation Pane.The Navigation Pane is column on the left side of the Outlook window that includes panes such as Shortcuts or Mail and the shortcuts or folders within each pane. Click a folder to show the items in the folder.
- Release the mouse button, and on the shortcut menu, click Move Here as Appointment with Attachment.
When you go through your Inbox and DELETE the items you can eliminate, DO the items that can be done in less than two minutes, and DELEGATE what you can pass on, you end up with only those action items that you need to complete yourself and that will require more than two minutes to complete. At this point, you can prioritize that list and then schedule time on your calendar to ensure the priorities get done.
Do it daily
Using the 4 D's model on a daily basis makes it easier to handle a large quantity of e-mail. Statistics show that on average, people can process 60 e-mail messages an hour. If you receive 30 to 60 messages per day, all you need is one hour of uninterrupted e-mail processing time to get through your Inbox. That's good value.
Of course, if you have a backlog of hundreds of messages, it will take some time to get to the point where daily routine keeps you up to date. But it's important to get that backlog down, so set aside some time to work through it — and then begin using your new technique from a clean slate. Then you can enjoy processing your 60 or so messages a day and have the satisfaction of a clean Inbox.
Transform your Inbox
Book yourself an hour of e-mail time a day and use the 4 D's. It can transform your Inbox and help create better work-life balance.
More information
About the author McGhee Productivity Solutions (MPS) provides consulting and education services designed to increase productivity and quality of life.
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