Thursday, December 5, 2013

Outgrow the “Unread mail” disease

You!

Yes you!

Be honest and admit it!

Your mail is open!

It is open all the time!

You have to ready every mail as soon as it hits your mailbox!

It’s a bad – it makes you context switch all the time and not be truly focused on your work. Even if you just delete the new mail you have still lost focus on your current work, it will take you few seconds to come back to the same state of mind as before. Now multiply those seconds by the number of your incoming emails every day. Some of those mails will take more than just few seconds, they can make you work for several minutes in order to reply (or just read that not important stuff that your boss writes).

That is a huge waste!!! And why?

“Maybe that is an important mail?”

“Maybe my replay is essential immediately?”

No! If it was really important and your reply was truly essential as soon as possible you would be called to your cellphone or someone would even come and meet you face to face in your office.

The levels of ‘Important’:

1.       End of the world important message and the reply as essential right now– meet that person face to face

2.       End of the world important message and the reply as essential right now (impossible to meet face to face) – call his or her cellphone

3.       Very important message and reply is important as soon as possible– call the office

4.       Very important message but the reply is not essential right now – send a text message

5.       The reply is not essential right away – send an email

You see? Someone will email you if he doesn’t need your reply right away. Now then you know it – CLOSE IT!
Your outlook or whatever email should be open only 4 times a day:

1.       When you come to your office in the morning

2.       Before you hit lunch

3.       After you come back from lunch

4.       Before you go home

During all the other time in your day – keep it closed!
It's ok that you have unread email. You got 4 times a day to sort it and read it. It's more than enough.

Good.

Back to work ;)