14 tips to stop losing your time with your email inbox. www.game-learn.com PLAY. LEARN. GROW. Copyright 2013 Gamelearn. All rights reserved. Any reproduction and/or modification, total or partial, is strictly prohibited without prior written permission.
EMAIL AND PERSONAL PRODUCTIVITY Your emails are an enabling communication tool. Not a job in itself. Don t let e-mails determine actions and decisions. If you let them control your work, others will make decisions for you. You were hired to sell, to manage, to serve clients, to do research, to supervise budgets... You were not hired to answer emails like a frantic robot. You need to regain control of email. It is a tool at your service, and not the other way around. Here are some tips that can dramatically change your relationship with email and boost productivity. You can find these ideas, tips and more in our Time Management Course, Triskelion www.gamelearn.com/en Copyright Copyright 2013 Gamelearn. 2013 Gamelearn. All rights reserved. All rights reserved. Any reproduction Any reproduction and/or modification, and/or modification, total or total partial, or is partial, strictly is strictly prohibited prohibited without without prior written prior written permission. permission.
Definitive guide to effectively managing email 1. Do NOT respond to emails immediately. Emails are an asynchronous communication tool, i.e. both parts communicate, but not simultaneously. This means that it is NOT compulsory to reply to an email minutes after receiving it. Mails are NOT to be used to ask for urgent decisions or responses. If this is the case, you should use the phone or talk face to face. Don t get your colleagues used to your answering emails immediately. They will expect you to continue doing so. An Intel study showed that 70 percent of e-mail gets handled within six minutes of arrival and the average worker is interrupted every three minutes and thus they had to task switch constantly. The bottom line was that Intel s workers were wasting about six hours a week. CIO magazine. 2. Don t start the day by checking your emails. It is very tempting, but you need to resist. There is nothing worse than starting the day by reading your emails. When you do it, you start an out-of-control rollercoaster that will continue all day. If you start with emails, you let them dictate priorities for the day. You must decide what your priorities are, not others. Decide your day s priorities the first thing in the morning. And then, you tart working on one of them. 3. Check emails only two to three times a day. Concentrate on working, on completing tasks, on crossing items off your list of priorities, i.e. what you have decided is the most important today. Why are you going to change your priorities just because someone decided to send you an email asking you for something or about a certain matter? Every productivity expert recommends checking emails two to three times a day, once mid- morning, once at the end of the morning and once during the afternoon. NOTHING will happen if you don t read an email for two hours. When we are in a meeting, traveling or visiting a client... we are not reading emails and NOTHING happens. 4. Close your inbox. Most people spend their day compulsively checking their inbox for new emails. Doing this wastes lots of time and prevents persons from concentrating on important tasks. Enjoy the feeling of focusing on important matters without suffering external distractions. 5. Turn off new message alerts. New message alerts distract you constantly, and prevent you from concentrating on the task at hand. Nobody would find it reasonable to let someone for any reason interrupt them when they are working and focused on something very important. A study by Microsoft researchers tracking the e-mail habits of coworkers found that once their work had been interrupted by an e-mail notification, people took, on average, 24 minutes to return to the suspended task. Harvard Business Review Copyright Copyright 2013 Gamelearn. 2013 Gamelearn. All rights All reserved. rights reserved. Any reproduction Any reproduction and/or modification, and/or modification, total or total partial, or partial, is strictly is strictly prohibited prohibited without without prior written prior written permission. permission.
Definitive guide to effectively managing email 6. Manage each email just once. Very often we open and close the same email many times without doing anything (without having made a decision, without deleting it, without answering it...). If you multiply the time wasted this way by the hundreds of emails that you receive, you will realize how this affects your productivity. If you are not going to do anything about an email, why are you opening it? Once you open an email, you must make a decision. Are you going to do anything about it? If not, delete it or file it. If you are going to act upon it and you can do it quickly, do it now. If you need more time, convert it into a task, a delegated task, a meeting or a pending reading and take it out of your inbox. Don t let yourself close the email again without having made a decision about it. 7. Don t use the inbox as a task repository. Your inbox should only contain emails that you need to read or that need a reply. Tasks should be moved to your To- Do List (a master list with all your pending tasks). 8. Make your inbox fit in your screen. Don t accumulate more mails in your inbox than what your screen can hold (maximum 30 messages). Making decisions about your emails when you are dealing with 20 of them is much easier, much faster, much more efficient and more motivating than when having to deal with hundreds of messages. An inbox with hundreds of emails is the same as an untidy desk. It will stress you, affect your concentration and reduce productivity. The inbox is where your emails land. It s transitory before behind moved to the right destination. Once you have made a decision regarding an email, the email must disappear from your inbox. The inbox is NOT a file folder. Your email software allows you to file things easily and rapidly so don t keep unnecessary emails in your inbox. The inbox is a runway, and it needs to be clear for the next landing. 9. Send less email. The more email you send, the more email you will receive. Try sending only relevant mails. Talk to people, phone them. Don t use email if you can avoid it. 10. Write concisely. You can save a lot of time if you learn to write concise mails. Get straight to the point. If you can say it in three sentences, don t use more. 11. Turn off notifications from social media sites: You don t need to be notified every time someone updates his Facebook wall, Linkedin profile or tweets something. Like e-mail alerts, these are constant interruptions that will seriously impede your concentration and your productivity. Copyright Copyright 2013 Gamelearn. 2013 Gamelearn. All rights reserved. All rights reserved. Any reproduction Any reproduction and/or modification, and/or modification, total or total partial, or partial, is strictly is strictly prohibited prohibited without without prior written prior written permission. permission.
Definitive guide to effectively managing email 12. Immediately mark spam. Whenever you receive unsolicited commercial emails quickly mark as spam. This can be done with a single button press. Once done, your spam filter will automatically filter all emails from that sender. You will also help identify spammers, which will benefit all of us. If you did give permission to receive information, don t mark as spam, unsubscribe 13. Unsubscribe from what you don t read. All blogs, newsletters, feeds that you are not actually reading are cluttering your inbox. Unsubscribe from all of them. You can do it individually or mass-unsubscribe with services like unroll.me 14. Define company-wide basic e-mail rules. If you think about it properly, most of your emails are with company colleagues. If your team or your organization were able to implement a basic email policy, you would all benefit hugely. The incorrect use of email represents millions of hours wasted a year for your organization Implementing an e-mail use policy is easy. You only need certain basic rules that could be negotiated and agreed by all: The subject of the email should be brief and descriptive. It must clearly indicate what the email is about. You cannot send an email without a subject. Agree on a subject nomenclature. This could include abbreviations such as FYI (For your information) or FYA (For your answer) or EOM (End of message) when you send a message without body and with a subject only. One mail per topic: Don t deal with different matters in one email only. Write concise emails. These should be as brief as possible. The body of the message must start with the conclusion, the question or the request. Then you may include arguments, explanations... Limit the use of the urgent tag. Reduce the use of reply to all and avoid mass emails. Emails are NOT to be used for urgent matters. Copyright Copyright 2013 Gamelearn. 2013 Gamelearn. All rights All reserved. rights reserved. Any reproduction Any reproduction and/or modification, and/or modification, total or total partial, or partial, is strictly is strictly prohibited prohibited without without prior written prior written permission. permission.
CARD FOR PRINTING by Triskelion 1. Do NOT respond to emails immediately 2. Don t start the day by checking your emails 3. Check emails only two to three times a day 4. Close your inbox 5. Turn off new message alerts 6. Manage each email just once 7. Don t use the inbox as a task repository 8. Make your inbox fit in your screen 9. Send less email 10. Write concisely 11. Turn off notifications from social media sites 12. Immediately mark spam 13. Unsubscribe from what you don t read 14. Define company-wide basic e-mail rules Visit : www.gamelearn.com/en by Triskelion 1. Do NOT respond to emails immediately 2. Don t start the day by checking your emails 3. Check emails only two to three times a day 4. Close your inbox 5. Turn off new message alerts 6. Manage each email just once 7. Don t use the inbox as a task repository 8. Make your inbox fit in your screen 9. Send less email 10. Write concisely 11. Turn off notifications from social media sites 12. Immediately mark spam 13. Unsubscribe from what you don t read 14. Define company-wide basic e-mail rules Visit : www.gamelearn.com/en Copyright Copyright 2013 Gamelearn. 2013 Gamelearn. All rights reserved. All rights reserved. Any reproduction Any reproduction and/or modification, and/or modification, total or total partial, or partial, is strictly is strictly prohibited prohibited without without prior written prior written permission. permission.
TRISKELION You can find hundreds of tips like these in our Time Management Course, Triskelion. Find more about the Triskelion Personal Productivity System. It has been applied by tens of thousands of users from over 300 of the largest companies in the world. Click here for more information: www.gamelearn.com/en ABOUT GAMELEARN Gamelearn is the world leading company in training based in Serious Games. It s the pioneer corporation in game-based learning product development, with video games and apps focused towards management and soft skills improvement and crafted for individual and corporate training using the most innovative gamification tools. TRISKELION Time Management and Personal Productivity Course MERCHANTS Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Course PACIFIC Leadership and Team Management Course BRILLIANT MEETING Gamified App for effective Meetings Management GAMLEARN is a global leader and pioneer in game-based learning for soft skills development. PLAY. LEARN.GROW. Visit us at www.game-learn.com Copyright 2013 Gamelearn. All rights reserved. Any reproduction and/or modification, total or partial, is strictly prohibited without prior written permission.