Overpower your Inbox
When the topic is email, then the big question is about control? Who controls who? You or the emails? In the modern professional world, emails play a significant role in communication. So, it was not a surprise when I found myself in a gaming environment a few years back. I was given a simulated email client and faced a hypothetical crisis which was getting worse minute by minute. This exercise was part of an assessment for a new role. Although I qualified for the new position, I was not happy with the way I handled the evaluation. The lack of jubilation was compounded by the disappointing chase of the elusive dream named Inbox Zero.
Inbox Zero translates to zero emails in your inbox. Imagine what would take for you to have zero emails in your inbox. It would require a carefully thought out plan for email management. Before going any further, we should analyze the volume of emails in a business scenario. When I calculated the averages against 209 working days, the received emails amounted to 79 whereas the sent emails capped at 20 emails. The figures are less than what is reported for an average American worker. How do you sift through these 79 emails to identify the actions and the follow-ups? Which ones do we mark for deletion and which for archival? These questions pose the major challenge.
When you embark on solving this puzzle, you will eventually find the popular time management technique GTD® or Get Things Done® by productivity consultant David Allen. I will refrain from explaining this technique further as there are volumes written on the same. When you master this technique, you are faced with another challenge. How do you start on a clean slot? There is a simple solution for this too. You declare email bankruptcy. To claim Chapter 11 on emails, you will first archive all your emails. Then, you will send an email to all your contacts where you will inform them that your emails are lost. As a footnote, you will request everyone to resend any urgent emails for reconsideration.
To start on a clean slate is a boon. If you have achieved this part, then the next stage is to avoid being overwhelmed by GTD®. All the decluttering methodologies will ask you to prioritize your emails. Such a seemingly easy task might turn out to be daunting. They are no guidelines for prioritizing. Unless you have decided on a prioritization methodology, you will not manage emails, but the reverse will happen. Though it is better to do some soul searching on this topic, I will make it easier for you with the following guidelines.
- We provide a service to our customers. So, any email from the customer has to be prioritized. Depending on the nature of the business, you will have favorites.
- We work in a hierarchical organization. As a result, there is a manager on top of us and direct reports below us. This chain cannot be broken. Hence both of them become important to us.
- We work as part of the cross-functional teams. Here again, you can pick your favorites.
You will still have issues from your direct reports (and their reports) and also from the cross-functional teams. As far as email is concerned, more is less. As a result, there are more recipients than necessary because of the fear of missing someone important by oversight. You can still employ a tweak here. You only pick up the ones which are directly addressed to you and ignore the ones where you are in the cc. If you do want to avoid disappointments (from the other parties), you could write a note to everyone on how you prioritize emails. You could also urge for common sense while sending emails, which means you should be marked only when it matters.
In the modern professional world, effective email management is fast becoming a desirable skill. It is becoming increasingly crucial that you master your inbox. Inbox Zero might be a utopia, but you still can have a tidy inbox. The key to a tidy inbox is your prioritization methodology. Once you have finalized this methodology, you can write rules to assign tags to an email — a category and a follow-up flag. The rules can also help you to archive emails automatically. These techniques will automatically weed out undesirables from your vision. Less clutter automatically translates to better view and also focus.
If you have read this article, there is one thing I would request you to share. Do you have a prioritization methodology? Would you share it?
