EMail Productivity Tips
February 17th, 2006According to a Harris Interactive survey in January:
- 59% of U.S. adults who use email at work admit to wasting a lot of time searching for lost email.
- 31% admit to having to re-write or re-construct lost emails.
- 28% acknowledge that the sheer volume of email they receive causes them to fall behind in their work.
- 61% use work email for personal correspondence.
Tips to deal with email more productively:
- Upgrade and optimize mail systems and procedures.
- Fortify your defenses – Get rid of spam before it hits mailboxes.
- Turn off auto-check. Check email at defined times (within your own time-management priorities).
- Color-code or filter priority sender’s emails so that you can see them at a glance.
- Pick off the quick responses – respond first to anything you can answer in 30 seconds to a minute.
- Don’t write as much as you would in a letter. If you need to write a lengthy responses, set aside time to do that within project management priorities.
- Use content masters or templates for boilerplate responses. Write it once for your own content and style, then tailor it as needed.
- If you know deep down that you’re never going to respond to an email, delete it or archive it in a folder for future reference.
