“Ding”
You arrive at your desk in the morning and are greeted by the not-so-welcoming sound of another batch of new emails that have come in throughout the night.
You begin to scroll through them, finding that they are comprised of mostly nonsense with a few important details strewn throughout.
“Ding”
Another new email has arrived, and you begin to wonder how far back your neglect goes, so you scroll further down to look for the oldest messages you have yet to reply to.
“Ding”
Like a modern-day Telltale Heart, it rings louder in your ears as more and more emails come flooding in while you’re still just deciding which one to respond to first. You calm yourself and reply to one email to give yourself a momentary sense of success, and then….
“DING”
The day has barely begun and already these incessant dings are testing the limits of your morning coffee and the durability of your nearest stress ball.
It’s a terrible feeling, but one that professionals working in the new normal of “always-on” hybrid workplaces know too well. Business communication never stops, and unless you put tactics into place – and stick to them – it’s easy for anyone to get buried in emails. Then, you find yourself playing a constant game of catchup that feels like trying to pull yourself out of quicksand.
The following tips are to help you get a handle on your inbox and help save your sanity.
1. Establish a Prioritization System
First and foremost, you need to have a system to help sort through emails when they come in. This allows you to quickly sort through the mess before you start dealing with any of it and can prevent you from becoming overwhelmed when a large volume of emails needs to be handled.
To keep up, it can be helpful to set up a folder system and move new emails into those folders as they come in, but do not get carried away with your filing system and keep things simple. A rookie mistake is trying to create folders for every single situation, and while it may be beneficial to get more detailed in your filing when it comes to archiving emails, we’re focusing on how to file them away before taking any action on them, so the idea here is to keep things nice and easy.
One example that can help keep things simple and organized: By sorting emails based on what’s required of you.
- Review When Possible
- These are the lowest priority emails and those that are purely for your review/knowledge and do not necessarily require any action from you. Emails you place in this folder can be dealt with when you get the chance, possibly at the end of the day or even put off until the next day.
- Needs Further Action
- You would expect that this category would account for a majority of your emails, and you will be surprised when that’s not the case. No matter the size of your company, a lot of emails will circulate so that team members can have visibility, and while these are still important to review, you should separate them from those that actually require a response from you. By doing this, you’ll quickly realize that your beast of an inbox is a lot easier to keep under control.
- Archive
- Once you complete an action on an email, move it from the “Needs Further Action” folder to the archive however you have it organized. The point here is to move anything that you have completed action on from this folder so you can keep it clean. You don’t want to open this folder and find yourself face-to-face with 100 emails that you think all require action (when you’ve really completed work on 85 of them).
- Trash
- No need to create a new folder for this one but do make sure to use it. If an email is not relevant to you and serves no long-term purpose, delete it immediately. This would include spam emails and lesser important (likely unsolicited) emails that would just clog up your day.
Rarely will an email fall into the “Immediate Response Needed” category, but if those emails do come up (and they should be marked as high priority and clearly state that your response is expected immediately), you should respond to them as quickly as possible outside of the sorting system outlined above.
Otherwise, the exciting truth is that most emails can wait, and you do have the option to delay your response to a certain extent (although modern day email etiquette suggests you should reply to most emails within 24 hours).
With emails sorted out in this way from the start, you will realize that those 40 unread emails in your inbox really translate to 5 or 6 that need your attention. One step in, and we’ve already cut down that stress exponentially!
2. A.B.U – Always Be Unsubscribing
It doesn’t matter how careful you are – if you spend time on the web, you’re going to amass an unnecessary and unruly number of email subscriptions. Many purchases you make and activities you complete on the web will subscribe you to mailing lists, and those companies will not forget about you. Over time, you will find yourself seeing an increasing number of these mailing list messages come through, and while some may valuable (these rules certainly don’t apply to any Lenovo mailing lists), you will be tempted to quickly delete them while cursing “that darn spam that floods my inbox”.
The good news is that you can unsubscribe from most of these mailings, and you should take the extra time to do that rather than just deleting the messages when they come in. Yes, it may be quicker to delete and move on, but they always come back, and if you’re every searching for something in your deleted folder, they’re just going to muddy up your query, so it’s best to make them stop for good.
That being said, if you do want to keep yourself subscribed to tons of mailing lists so you never miss a deal on the latest pair of pants, it would be wise to create a folder where you place these messages, so they don’t get caught up with your more important work emails.
3. When it’s time to respond, be ready to respond
Since a lot of this month on LenovoPRO Community is about your mental health as it relates to your job and the workplace, it’s important to mention that responding to emails should really only be done when you’re in the right headspace. Email does afford us a very great opportunity to delay response in many situations, and that’s a valuable tool that allows us to collect our thoughts, rationalize our response, and formulate a message that gets your point across in a tactical way.
Therefore, set times to respond to your emails and ensure that you’re prepared to do so when the time comes. If you’re feeling emotional and ready to blow up at someone, it’s probably not the best time to respond to your co-workers about stress-inducing issues. In these cases, consider moving your scheduled email review time, and instead, take a walk or a trip to the gym.
Again, always keep in mind that emails afford you the option to wait – and take advantage when you need it. In this day and age, if someone really needs you now, they have ways of getting in touch with you outside of email.
4. Maintain Control During Focus Periods: Turn Off Email Notifications
If you let them, most jobs will have you communicating all day long (and still want more), but the reality is that you have work to do, and that’s why you must hold your focus periods as sacred.
This tip is a two-in-one recommendation that could save your sanity in the workplace, and make you more productive overall:
- Block off specific focus times on your calendar during which you are dedicating yourself to working on the things you must get done. No meetings can be scheduled during these times, and nobody can contact you unless it’s urgent.
- During these focus periods, close your email (shut it down the whole way) and turn off notifications.
One of the unfortunate realities of the modern-day workplace is that email programs tend to always stay open in the background during work hours, which results in a constant dinging of email (and calendar) notifications. By setting times that allow you to focus on your work, and really honoring those periods by turning off all email notifications, you will find time to catch up on all the things that you’ve been buried by.
5. Consider the “Five Sentence Technique”
On the flip side of this conversation is the opportunity to improve how you send emails to ensure you’re doing your part to keep tame the inboxes of your co-workers and the people you interact with – and hopefully, they follow your lead.
One tactic that has become popular lately is the “Five Sentence Technique” or “Five Sentence Rule”, which is just how it sounds: The idea that we should all keep emails under five total sentences.
By doing this, we are honoring another often-forgotten rule and benefit of emails: The opportunity to communicate with brevity. When it comes to emails, you will find that you can get your point across in just a few sentences, and if you’re aiming for that goal of staying within five total sentences (and those you interact with do the same), you may see how much more pleasant it is responding to emails when it doesn’t require a lot of reading along the way.
Remember, when it comes to taming the inbox, we’re all in this together. So be sure to speak up (in polite ways) and work with co-workers to regularly evaluate your email communications to improve efficiency.
With these tips, a little teamwork, and some organization, we can all start our workday without fear of an inbox avalanche.
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What tips do you have for taming the inbox? Share them in this thread!