I am wasting my time on the email

by Raphael
(France)

Hello,

Good site that you have here. Each day I get about 100 emails and I find that I am spending too much time on all of these emails. I guess this is a time waster but I am not sure what to do?
Does anyone have any ideas?
Raphael

Kell's response

Hi Raphael,
Thanks for your comments on the site. I am trying hard to get my knowledge online, to make it available to people on the web and not just to people in our time management courses.

Without knowing the content of the emails the first thing to do would be to set up an email filter to ensure that you are filtering out your spam emails.

The second would be to turn off the automatic notification on your email software.

This is usually a pretty easy thing to do, requiring you to go into the email options and changing the settings.

This stops you being interrupted by email, and concentrating on the work that you have to do.

Try to set a couple of times a day to check your email. I check mine in the morning, at midday and at the end of the day, and each time I try to clear the email Inbox.

The above helps manage the distractions of emails.

Now it is important to work on the content of your emails.

If you are sending many of the same types of emails then a template may be a good idea.

For example, as a lecturer I deal sometimes with a 100 student emails a day. Much of these are the same questions, so I have set up a template for each question.

I then customize the template to the person and the situation. In essence I am avoiding re-inventing the wheel.

The next thing to do is to avoid writing an email epic, but rather try to keep your responses to the questions that are being asked. In essence, try to keep you emails clear and to the point.

I talk more about email etiquette that saves you and your colleagues time.


I hope that this helps

Cheers
Kell