How To Handle Email Effectively

You know you need a productivity makeover when you compulsively check your email every other minute. This tragically true infographic by Wendy MacNaughton, vocally expresses productivity’s mortal enemy, overwhelming inboxes.

Without further ado, here are tips for being the boss of your own Inbox. We say it has been let loose far too long!

VALUE

Focus on email replies that REALLY offer something. Do you really need to confirm you received a report or say thank you to someone you exchange emails with every single hour with?

SORT

A foolproof strategy adopted by those who’ve mastered inboxing is to categorize and prioritize email. Classify emails into groups, for instance work, projects, family, social and updates and only focus on those really worthy of your time.

Sorting them according to engagement level also helps tremendously.

Put them in groups or label them according to how time-consuming they’re. Have three groups:

Under-1-minute-reply

Under-5-minute-Reply

Under 20-minute reply

The latter is for those emails that require a bit of research or a carefully put together answer. Our tip, start with the most time-consuming ones!

NIGHT SHIFTS

Instead of wasting your more productive hours digging through email, leave it for the last hour of work. This way you have a distraction-free schedule to work through – unless of course you’re plagued by other distractions such as rainbow cat gifs  and Facebook notifications.

TIME TRACK EMAIL CHECKING

Set an alarm for how long you will spend on email checking. Save any reading-worthy content for later, your mission is to declutter that overflowing inbox!

EMAIL ETIQUETTE

There’s really no rush in immediately responding to every single email dropping in your inbox. A within 24-hour reply is fairly acceptable. No use losing your mind over email, is it now?

If still curious whether you should check your email now that you’ve read this article, perhaps looking at this handy infographic will answer your question!