Time Management Tip: 

E-Mail madness

Couple of weeks back when I sent photos of my new born to my friends and relatives, most of them acknowledged. But when I called one of my relatives and asked him whether he saw the photos, he said he might have received the e-mail, but it might be lost in the 'e-mail' deluge he is having.

Not only him, but all of us are getting more and more messages into our e-mail boxes. Also with multiple e-mail accounts, we end up spending more than 2 to 3 hours just managing our e-mail and information contained in those e-mails. Last week one more friend is mentioning that he is not going to check e-mail over weekend (that is a resolution). Another one was saying first thing she does in morning is to connect to e-mail. 

As a time management tip, I want to share and if possible learn from you how you are managing this e-mail madness.

1. Get off mailing lists: If you find a particular mailing list you are on is not relevant any more, just get off the mailing list (including this list). I keep doing this regularly. I mean it. If you are on Yahoogroups mailing lists, you can switch to digest mode and get only one e-mail per day on entire conversation.

2. Set up and maintain rules to e-mail: Many of us already might have some rules to automatically route e-mails based on some conditions. It is fine, but also ensure you do maintenance of those rules. One of my colleague has not reset a rule she created two years for a project at that time and though it is not relevant mails get routed to that folder incorrectly and she has not taken (most probably a minute) to either delete or modify the rule.

3. Follow e-mail etiquette: If you are replying and forwarding e-mails, see whether you can eliminate the chain. Last week I received one e-mail which contained a thread of 20 earlier messages out of which only recent 3 messages were current and no one bothered to delete the earlier messages.

4. Reduce 'FYI' or 'cc' ing: We have a tendency to mark copy to all persons who 'might' be need to know. Sometimes we overdo it by marking copies to people who don't have any interest or relevance.

Remember everyone has different way of handling e-mail. If you are very quick to process your e-mail (less than 1 hour), don't expect others also to follow the same. Find what suits them and follow that. I found that some are comfortable with phone messages, some with post-it notes, some with 'drop-in' conversations. Don't send urgent e-mail to person who is comfortable with phone messages. Definitely one-to-one e-mails can be substituted with phone calls and drop-in conversations. The time you take to prepare e-mail may be more than the time you need to talk in person.

Starting last week I have started taking concrete steps not only to reduce the e-mails I receive, but also send. e.g. one colleague asked for information through e-mail. Before I got a chance to reply to the e-mail, I met her in hallway. I quickly conveyed the information she was expecting orally and now I don't need to send another e-mail. (one e-mail less to send, one e-mail less to read for the other person).