Are you overwhelmed by your email? If so, you are not alone. In his book Communication Landmines, Marty Clarke states, "Keep in mind that e-mail is essentially a speed medium. Communicating through e-mail buys you incredible speed. And this speed exists on both sides of the communication." So why the overwhelm...you receive an email, you respond, they respond, you respond, and so forth. If you start this first thing in the morning, it might be noon before the email go-round stops!
In practical terms what does this mean:
- You need to designate specific times each day to check and respond to email. Two to three times would be optimal, but many of you are laughing out loud at this suggestion, so start with once an hour.
- Reset your email to only send/receive once an hour rather than every five minutes.
- Consider whether email is the best mode of communication.
- Unsubscribe from ezines that you never read or that don't apply to your situation any more.
- Drop the email alarm.
- Develop stock answers to routine questions.
Bottom-line is that any steps you can take to decrease the number of emails entering your inbox and to methodically process those that do will reduce the overwhelm created from seeing a full inbox. Be greedy with your time and efforts, don't let email take over your life!
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