Managing Your E-Mail

Do you find yourself wasting more and more time on e-mail? While e-mail is a great tool to communicate, it can also be a huge time waster! You can easily waste hours of time a day reading and responding to unnecessary e-mails. If you are interested in becoming more effective and efficient with your e-mail communications, follow these simple steps and you can easily double your effectiveness in this area:

1. Change how you manage your e-mail

If you are like most people, the first thing you do in the morning is get on your e-mail. While this can be very tempting, it’s absolutely the wrong thing to do. When you do this, you get into reactionary mode and allow other people to set your agenda for the day. By the time you get through your e-mail and respond to what other people want, you have burned through the better portion of your day. Instead, respond to e-mail right before lunch and at the end of the day, right before you go home. When you do this, you’ll be motivated to get through your e-mails so that you can get to lunch or go home for the day. It also opens up your ability to focus on important and pro-active things when you start your day.

2. Chose your e-mail titles carefully

Have you ever noticed what types of e-mail titles get your attention? If you want to make sure that your e-mail gets read, you need to pay attention to how you title your e-mails. For example, if you need a quick response, adding the words “immediate response needed” will tell the person that you sent the e-mail to what you need. Other words you can use include: action required or for your information. Keep in mind that you only want to use this technique when you need to.

You can also coach other people to use this technique with you, so that it’s easier to sort through your own e-mails.

3. Use e-mail only when appropriate

Many of us overuse e-mail. There are many reasons for this including: convenience, covering your butt, laziness, fear, and avoidance. Pay attention to how you are using e-mail. Ask yourself if a quick phone call or face-to-face interaction might be a better way to handle the situation. Also encourage other people to do the same thing with you. This is an effective way to end long endless e-mails and miscommunications.

By utilizing the 3 techniques above, you can save a lot of time on e-mail that you can spend doing more productive things during your day!

Are you ready to take your time management skills to the next level?  Would you like to have more balance in your life?  Click here to sign up for a complimentary coaching session where I will coach you to massively increase your productivity and results while working less and making more!