Hello, this is Laura Lee Rose – author of the business and time management book TimePeace: Making peace with time and The Book of Answers: 105 Career Critical Situations– and I am a business and efficiency coach that specializes in time management, project management and work-life balance strategies. Steve Wynkoop and I talk a lot about designing and managing our professional careers on a weekly interview on SSWUG TV.
The IT Professional Development Toolkit DVD goes into further details on the who, what, where, when, and why of these topics.
Some of us receive hundreds of emails a day. Others receive thousands. Just managing your inbox is one thing, but what about making time for everything else you need to do while still remaining timely with email responses?
Email is one of those places where you can easily and quickly reduce your time. Here are some steps:
1) Incorporate auto-responders to handle the Frequently Asked Questions and Concerns. Document Q&A once and post the FAQ in an easily accessible location online. Use the auto-responders to point people to the information or website.
2) Delegate 1st line emails to an assistant. Just because you can answer your email doesn’t mean you should be answering your email. Even if you don’t feel like you can keep an assistant busy, you can take advantage of a virtual assistant. You can arrange to have a part-time virtual assistant during your busiest sales or development time or have them work just 1-2 days a week.
3) Consider a Subject Headline convention. Ask your team to use a specific convention <Type: Informational/Status Report/Action Required/Critical Issue> and <Deadline>. If the headline is formatted in such a way that you can determine the topic, priority and action needed from you – then you (or your assistant) don’t have to open the email to properly prioritize it.
4) Make use of Message Rules. Use your message-rules email features to automatically sort your incoming mail to it’s proper folders without your intervention. For instance: newsletters, junk mail, promotions, social media updates and external marketing campaigns can automatically be sorted, filtered or deleted without taking your time. Once you have your Subject Headline Convention in place, you can easily filter and sort based on the information type and due-date in the headline (versus when the email was sent)….which is a more effective way to sort. Then you schedule blocks of time to review the different folders.
5) Announce your intentions. Everyone is familiar with the “On Vacation” feature of many emailers. The reason this works is that it simply announces your communication/email schedule. It tells people when you are away from email and for them not to expect an immediate response. It also includes backup contacts and hand-off information. Don’t limit this strategy to vacation. Publish your “email response intentions”. Some examples (but limited to):
a) When they can expect a quality response….within 1 business day, 48 hours, 1 week; etc. If you have your Subject Headline Convention in place, you can have different SLA (service level agreements) in place for different topics, categories, priorities, folders and even based on senders. This can all be automated and filtered into the various folders. They will get receiving an immediate response (via your auto-responder), confirming that you did receive their email and needs xx time to provide a complete and quality response. This automatically puts your sending at ease without adding pressure to your plate.
b) Move from interrupt mode to blocked out quality time. Announce in your auto-responders that you normally review your email at 2-4:00pm daily (just an example). Blocking out a specific time review your email not only releases you from the distraction of having to review each mail as it comes along; but allows you the time to give a focused and accurate response. Responses created ‘on the fly’ are often vague, rushed and sometimes inaccurate. They are often crafted to dismiss the issue as quickly as possible; and often create more confusion than it has answered.
People know now that you have schedules some quality time read this in detail and give it focused thought later in the day. Most people just need to get if off their desk (not necessarily an immediate response from you). And they will feel validated that you feel this is important enough for you to take your time in responding. If that time period is not satisfactory to them, they can schedule a phone meeting or drop by your office.
c) Eliminate the Quadrant 3 emails. Include a delegate, back-up, FAQ document or automation to handle some of the seemingly urgent but unimportant items. Most of our time is spent on seemingly urgent but unimportant items (Quadrant 3 from Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People). Just because someone is asking “now” doesn’t mean that it’s urgent. It just means they are contacting you ‘now’.
d) Have a communication plan. Set the proper expectations in regards to your email. Have a communication plan with each of your significant stakeholders. If you educate your significant stakeholders on how you plan to manage your email, people will know how reset their expectations. It’s when you don’t tell people when you will get back to them, that they continue to pester you until you get back to them. Setting up a communication plan in regards to phone, email, instant messages, text, meetings, etc is a great way to avoid both distractions and frustrations.