In this chapter we have gone through quite a journey. Hopefully, along the way you’ve learned that your whole life probably shouldn’t be about email.

Here is a quick reference you can print out:

  • Inbox Power hour
    • 1-10m: Quick Sort from top to bottom
    • 11M-20M: Emails from NOT People
    • 21-30m: Emails to NOT you
    • 31-40m: Unread email
    • 41-50m: To me from a real person
    • 51-60m: Closeout
  • Control the Flow Out
    • Send Fewer emails
    • Delay sending emails
    • Don’t Hit reply all unless you have to
    • Use Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) more
    • Use drafts and notes to build up information for people, and send one email instead of many.
    • Give yourself time to back out by delaying email.
    • Have a meeting, phone call, or chat instead.
    • Make your important emails different
    • Communicate what you need from someone clearly
    • Add context when forwarding emails
  • Control the Flow of Email in
    • Unsubscribe from things
    • Turn off notifications
    • Move it to something else
    • Mark it as junk
  • Make a system
    • Morning 10-minute email triage and delete FYIs
    • Schedule 1 hour a day to deal with TODO emails. Last in first out if you can.
    • Schedule 1 hour to read the Read Later emails.
    • Set up a consistent schedule that works for you.
  • Control Your Attention
    • Control when you check. Once an hour? Twice a day? Once a day?
    • Close your email for most of the day
    • Ask for urgent emails to be sent differently

Credit

Content copied from Personal Email Management by Joy Perrin published by Texas Tech University Libraries under a CC BY-NC license.

License

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Business Computer Applications Copyright © 2022 by NSCC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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