That’s nowadays a reality that all of us are extremely busy during the day and can hardly find any time to relax. We are always overwhelmed with work, constantly watching emails pile up day by day until everything gets messed up and confused. In time it becomes difficult to find a concrete email that may be really important. As a result our colleagues, customers, or boss might get annoyed for receiving late reply or no reply to email at all. Fortunately, there are certain ways to get out of this situation. All you need to do is manage your time properly and learn some email management tips so that you can organize your emails in no time and stay more productive at work without distraction.
1. Check Your Emails Wisely
When checking emails, you need to be careful and make sure you don’t waste a lot of time doing this. Briefly look through your inbox and try to set aside the most important emails that need to be replied. Check your emails at a certain time of the day so that you can avoid continuous distractions from checking your inbox for new emails over and over again. You can also use third-party software or email management tools that can help you organize your email box, unsubscribe from unwanted emails, stop spam, and other stuff. You can even configure your mailbox to receive emails at a certain point of the day when you are free to check them. If you do that then you should inform your team members about your mailbox settings so when they need you urgently but you can’t be reached through email they use other means of communication.
2. Change Your Email Reading Technique
You need to be both fast and accurate while reading emails. You cannot waste several hours at office just reading emails. Try to follow the “Two-Minute Rule”. The concept behind this is that if any email takes less than two minutes to read and process there is no point in reading it and postponing for replying later because it consumes more time in storing it for future than replying to it instantly. For emails that will take more than two minutes to read and reply schedule a time in your calendar and add it to your to do list for processing later.
3. Group All the Emails
Keep your emails organized into groups and divide them into different categories depending on their type, relevance, and importance. Create different labels and folders such as ‘Action Items’, ‘Reference’, ‘Archives’ and ‘Waiting’ and move all your emails to the respective folders depending upon their type. This will let you have access to the emails quickly when you need them and you will save a lot of time.
4. Think Positive
It’s important to think positively at the start of each day and come to office with a fresh mind. Do not get irritated or angry by seeing all the emails piled up in your inbox. Act with confidence and divide all the work into small segments and go on processing the emails one by one. Soon you will find that all the emails have been processed by you in no time and you will feel relieved with a sense of accomplishment.
If we want to get success as business professionals we have to learn how to spend our time rationally. Because time is money.