How to Make Email Your Friend and Work for You

Reduce Your Email Work to be More Productive

Last November, the state of my email box at work was basically like an overflowing dumpster in an apartment complex. I had roughly three hundred or so emails sitting in it. Three hundred email for me is roughly three weeks of email. And to be honest with you, I had no idea what needed actions to be done and what needed to be deleted.

This was in the prime of my panic. My workload was unbearable, and I had all these emails sitting in the inbox. My stress levels always tended to go through the roof when I looked at my inbox too.

Something had to be done…

But what? I would have to spend a good portion of an evening sorting through all of the emails to find actionables. And then how would I keep my inbox to the illusive ‘zero’ we all desire, but hopelessly long for in our lives.

Researching the Hopeless

My first stop to learn more about mastering my email was Michael Hyatt. He is my virtual mentor when it comes to productivity and succeeding at life. And he always has a post about making work a little bit easier. Sure enough, he had this post: Yes, You Can Stay on Top of Email. In it, he talks about zero-ing your inbox everyday, decide what to do with every email, use keyboard shortcuts, and let rule filters handle the rest.

It was a useful article, but there are really only two parts I use which have been most helpful. These two behaviors he talks about are zero your inbox every day, and decide what to do with every email.

Zero Your Inbox Daily

This is key for me to be able to keep track of every email. I make sure I leave the office with zero emails in my inbox. This way, anything new that comes in overnight, will be fresh in the morning. Here is how I do it:

Three Focused Email Times: My email is essential to my work productivity. I may literally get an email in which helps me resolve multiple tasks, so I have to keep it and and respond to some at a moments notice.

This said, anything which isn’t important and urgent to my work product gets left to my three focused times: Morning (15 Minutes), 1PM (15–30 Minutes), Shutdown (30 Minutes). I schedule these into my calendar every day. This is when I work email which is not part of my main work product.

Work Every Email

When I work the specific email times I use a very specific process which Michael shares in his post. I decide whether I need to:

• Do it Now: If it is a quick response which does not require more than a sentence, I will answer it then, add the email to my claim notes, and delete it.
• Delegate: If it is something I cannot answer and someone else can, I forward it to the right person, the sender copied on it, and delete it.
• Defer or Schedule it: This might be a really big response that is needed outside of my canned responses. I set a time on my calendar to reply the following day. This way I am prepared for it to take time.
• File It: In my office we get a lot of process change, training, and fyi emails for our job specific tasks. If one of those comes in and I will likely need it for later. I drag it into my Microsoft OneNote so I can find it later, then I delete the email.
• Delete It: So and so is going out on vacation next week and needs help with their desk while they are gone… make sure they have enough people to respond and delete it. Anything which doesn’t need to be saved or doesn’t require and action needs to be deleted.

The Results

Aside from taking vacation, being out sick, or a boat load of meetings, my inbox is always very clean now. On top of a clean inbox, I no longer have a mini-panic attack when I open up Outlook in the morning.

What I have also found is my schedule time for email is always more than what I need since I keep my inbox down. It is very amazing.

How did I start? I started by scheduling the time first, and than working my inbox starting from newest to oldest. It took me three days to get to zero. And I have never looked back.

How Productivity Can Help You

This all started when I was struggling with my work productivity. It not only was stressful and irritating, it was embarrassing. Ultimately, a 3AM panic wake up call brought me out of it and started this series of posts: 21 Productivity Tips to Use Now

If you missed my last post, check it out: How to Add Automation to Your Work Life

Respond and Share

Is your inbox at zero right now? If not, how many emails are in it right now? Share in the responses below. I will not criticize you, after all my wife’s personal email just topped 10,000…