Are You Managing Email or is it Managing You?

by | Sep 6, 2012 | Exercises

Oh, oh. This turned out to be a bit longer post than I wanted so please excuse the length. Since we’re on the topic of email this week, I thought it would be useful to explain how to managing email instead of letting it manage you. We all do this differently but this is what works for me.

The Objective

Your objective for managing email should be to have a virtually empty inbox. If you manage to achieve this you’ll be in control, organized, and responsive to those who are seeking your attention.

Get Organized

Before you start dealing with email you need to get organized. Just as you would have file drawers and file folders for every paper you touch, so must you have folders and files for each and every project you are working on. Organizing email by project means that it is easy to understand where an email would be filed and you can find it quickly without a search tool.

First In, First Out

The next thing you must organize is the order in which emails are presented. You should organize them, not with the most recent at the top but the most recent at the bottom. Organizing them at the top means that you can leave emails alone as they drop farther and farther down the window until they are out of site and forgotten. If the oldest ones are at the top it is saying that you have to deal with these first before you get to the newer ones. First in First out. Not Last in First Out. If you control the receipt to the bottom and have to deal with older ones first, filing them when you are finished in project oriented files then you will only have things in your inbox that you have not dealt with yet.

Process Email in Batches

If you look at email all day long then you’re letting it run your life. If you handle it only once a day you’ll get overwhelmed. The key to email is processing it in batches. The best way to do this is to make sure that you reserve time for email between formal meetings, handling those that just came in at the beginning of the day and then once every two hours or so for only a few minutes. If you do this, you’ll be managing email instead of letting it manage you.

Limit the Number of Touches

Now all the experts will tell you to handle email only once but that isn’t very realistic. I figure if you limit yourself to handling each email only twice then you’re doing well.

When you get back to your desk after a meeting then the first thing to do is to read all of the email that you received while you were out. That is handling it the first time. Looking at all of it at once allows you then to prioritize your email instead of doing it on a first in first out basis. While you might think that the next thing to do is to deal with the most important email first, this is exactly the wrong thing to do. What you need to do next is email management. Get rid of all the email that does not need more than a two word reply.

  1. Delete any junk email
  2. File any email that does not need a reply in the appropriate folder.
  3. File any emailed newsletters in a file to review on Friday afternoons or at lunch time. This is a file that can accumulate as it doesn’t really matter if you ever read these.
  4. Send replies or delegate quickly any things that can be handled by others.

If like most people, you are getting and sending an average of 110 emails a day, then about 10 or 20 of them will not fall into those categories. Dealing with the unimportant emails first in the manner specified above will take about five minutes every time you sit down to deal with email. If you have left an hour between meetings then you’ll have lots of time to deal with the two or three important emails you get that require some work or a longer response.

More Complex Emails

Now to the ones that require some work, the key is to think about them for a while. Don’t do them right away. Target though to get them dealt within 24 hours of their receipt. Giving yourself time to think about how to deal with them will mean that you handle them twice or even three times but that should give you time to figure out if they are material and how you can do the least amount of work possible and still meet the other person’s needs. When you are ready and only when you are totally ready ten deal with the mail and file it away. In this way you should be able to maintain an inbox that is relatively clean.

If you have something that you cannot deal with right away, send a response indicating when the person should expect a full response. If there is something that you need to follow up on then establish another folder for follow up items that you check once a day.

Who can we blame for inventing Email?

by | Sep 5, 2012 | Leaders

I bet you know who invented the telephone. How about the light bulb? If you’re Canadian, you know who invented insulin because that may be the last time something that useful was invented here. (I’m sure I’ll get hate mail for that comment.) How about Email? Do you know who invented it? I must admit that I didn’t know. Such a shame since it’s reach is worldwide and the frequency of its use surely would qualify it as a pandemic.

 

Here are some stats on its use from the Radacati Group

  • 107 trillion – The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2010.
  • 294 billion – Average number of email messages per day.
  • 1.88 billion – The number of email users worldwide.
  • 2.9 billion – The number of email accounts worldwide.

So there are all sorts of claims as to who actually invented it. The answer depends on how you define email.

Tom Van Vleck

The first attempt at something like email was back in the mid 60s on MIT’s Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS). Tom Van Vleck developed a “mail” command that let users send electronic messages to other users of the same system. No networking and no mail system but it was a useful start.

Ray Tomlinson

In 1971, Ray Tomlinson built a messaging system atop ARPAnet, the research network funded by the US Department of Defense that would eventually give rise to the internet. Ray’s system sent electronic messages between machines. Messages now, but no application. It was recognized in 1977 that  no attempt was being made to emulate a full-scale, inter-organizational mail system.

V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai

Then in 1978 V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai,a 14-year-old working in Newark, NJ built and copyrighted a software program called “email”. This was the first program to structure electronic communications in a way that mimicked paper mail with “inboxes” and “outboxes” and “address books.” Ayyadurai who is now a lectureer at MIT was at the tender age of 14, working at the University of Medical and Dentistry of New Jersey.

You can check out his claim at www.inventorofemail.com/

And yes, that invention that you probably hate but can’t live without was invented by a 14 year old.

Back to School Means Back to Email

by | Sep 4, 2012 | Research

No, you’re probably not going back to school but for many, the day after Labour Day means the start to a new year. Despite the fact that the year doesn’t actually start for another four months, this is as good as a time as any to start afresh and improve the way you work.

To start your new year off well, for the next three weeks I’m going to focus on a few tips to make you more productive. To get started on this, I thought there would be nothing better than to tackle the one thing that seems to bog people down most. And what is that? Email of course.

The Email Grind

First some stats on email so that you don’t feel so all alone. According to statistics from a few email studies done by AOL.

  • 15% of Americans say they are addicted to email.
  • 59% of those using portable devices check email as it arrives.
  • 43% of users sleep near their email unit to hear incoming messages.
  • 40% consider email accessibility when they plan a trip.
  • 83% check their email once a day while on vacation.
  • 43% check their email first thing every morning.

Email Volume May be Overwhelming You

Statistics published by the Radacati group state that the typical corporate email user sends and receives about 110 emails per day. This breaks down into 74 email messages received, 61 of which are legitimate and 13 of which are spam. The average number of emails sent is about 36.

Oddly enough 110 emails per day does not sound like all that much. Could you imagine though if you got 110 letters in the mail each day or you got 110 phone calls in a day. You would be absolutely swamped. And guess what? Many of you are actually swamped by email.

So for a great New Year’s resolution, why not try to get more efficient about how you handle email. Over the next few days I’ll try to give you a few tips for making email less of a drain on your life.