If the idea of inbox zero makes you laugh, consider ways to make email less overwhelming.
Most people have at least one personal account and at least one business account. While some email is informational, other messages require action. There are only so many hours in the day, and your most productive work is not reacting to email.
Adopt the following rules to your email protocol, and soon you won’t dread checking email Monday mornings.
- Stop checking email every 5 minutes. 2-3 times per day is plenty.
- Turn off all email alerts on your phone and computer. Don’t let email run your day.
- Be invisible. Gmail and other email announces to everyone on your list when you are online often prompting people to say “Hi” or “I have a quick question”. Change your settings to invisible so when you are working on email, you can work on email.
- Respond in 5 sentences or less.
- Be transparent. Don’t make a recipient guess what your email is about. Expect a quicker response when your subject line is crystal clear.
For 10 more ways to bring sanity to your inbox, check out the email charter.
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Cool. We need this; meaning I have been unable to do it alone and feel like I have understanding company now.
I regularly log out of my work email and haveturned off the annoying alerts. It is surprising how many people think that they can email something which is high on their list of priorities and they hope it will become so on mine… surprisingly it wasn’t important enough to ask me in person though! I hve noticed that people seem very surprised when I tell them that I don’t have my emails on all day. I’m going to try not to look at my emails within the first hour of work at least.