Waving, not drowning How to stay afloat in a flood of emails

Waving not drowning How to stay afloat in a flood of emails

Prolog: Email my heart.

Help! I’m drowning in email. For each one I send out, three more pop back up. My inbox has a four-digit number of emails, over two-thirds unread. I bob up and down in this email flood, wishing there were a better way to manage emails.

Situation: Too many emails, no escape.

A McKinsey study found average US employees spending 28% of their working day reading and answering emails, with a growing number falling prey to email anxiety. Other than travelling back in time and “bribing” the inventors of email (Ray Tomlinson & Shiva Ayyadurai), there is no escaping this communication medium. And to be honest: it is a quick and cheap global method of information delivery and has many benefits…when used correctly.

Options: Check out these tips on better email management which worked well for me.

  • Check if your company has an email policy. Often a well thought-through policy exists, but is unknown or less followed.
  • Create a cc folder and have all emails with you as a cc-recipient automatically posted there via your email system. Inform your colleagues that you do not expect to act on emails with you in cc. Check them once/twice per week and delete all emails older than 2-3 months.
  • Do not create separate folders for emails in your email system. Instead, move critical emails into the relevant project folders alongside other document types. Use the sent emails folder as main backup storage area, which has great search options to quickly find emails via topic, date or recipient.
  • Try the zero-inbox method. Goal is to have no emails in your inbox at the end of each day; you only open each email once and then act on it, using the 1-2-3 method:
  • Quick answer emails: respond immediately after reading and then delete.
  • Information emails: read, store in project folder if needed and delete original email.
  • Emails that require more time and attention: copy into an interim file system (e.g. word document or OneNote) with short comment and delete original email; go through interim file system once per day and follow up.
  • How to get from a 999 email inbox to zero-inbox? Take a deep breath and start deleting all older emails and emails with same headers (except the one with newest date). You’ll be surprised how liberating this can be. Using the 1-2-3 method, whittle down the amount of emails to 0 over the course of one week. Then seriously start implementing zero-inbox.
  • Synchronize your emails only 3 times per day: suggested times are mornings after starting work, after lunch and one hour before quitting work. Set your email synchronization to manual. Downside: your written emails will only be sent at the same times, so be sure to let your colleagues know.
  • Do your part and write short, concise emails. See my article on 6-sentence emails. Make sure you (re-)write a understandable email heading with expected actions (and timing).
  • Align your communication with the proper medium. Often, email is not well suited for two-way (or multiple-way) discussions, stressful topics, or discussions which are spiraling out of control. For this, resort to personal communication via face-to-face (or phone / video chat).
  • If your company has a direct messaging service, use this for short requests and quick, one-ways information to single persons.

Take-away: Use email only if fitting to communication, only handle each received email once, try to have zero-inbox and only synchronize with email system three times per day.

© John Guenther Consulting 2019

John Guenther Consulting helps international companies reach their marketing business goals through interim assignments in leadership and project management roles. John is a seasoned marketing executive with 25 years of marketing & sales experience in global roles and diverse industries. His focus is on B2B marketing, transformation of marketing organizations, optimization of marketing & sales cooperation, brand management and agile leadership of complex marketing projects. Learn more at www.john-guenther-consulting.de.

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