Email can get in the way of productivity.
Constant interruptions break your concentration and prevent you focusing on the task in hand. I once read that it takes around 15 minutes to get full concentration back on a task after dealing with an email. Given that email clients often check for new mail every 10 minutes a busy email day will result in very little concentration time.
Here are my top tips for managing your email effectively:
- Install a truly effective mail client. I use Thunderbird (here is a useful tutorial for the non-techies), the rest of these tips are for Thunderbird, but most good clients have equivalent features.
- Use the “Junk” button to mark spam, pretty soon you will be able to set up rules to automatically filter out spam
- Filter messages according to their importance to you – mails from some people are considered important, whilst mails from unknown people are probably less important.
- If a mail cannot be dealt with immediately then use labels to mark actions required on emails (such as “reply later”, “Important” etc.)
- Use “search folders” to dynamically categorise inbox mail according to priority and labeling
- Filter related messages into relevant folders so you can process related mails at the same time
- Set a sensible frequency of mail checking. Your important mail accounts/folders need be checked no more frequently than once an hour. Less important accounts/folders only need to be checked once in the morning and once in the afternoon, or even less frequently. Note the default is to check mail every 10 minutes or so – far too frequent.
- Turn off new mail notifications – you don’t need them, you are only going to read mail every hour or so anyway (rules can be set up to notify you if certain key people mail you)
- Learn the keyboard shortcuts – it’s amazing how much faster you can work if you don’t have to keep grabbing the mouse.
- Turn on “Threads” view and use the thread management key shortcuts to quickly work through groups of related messages, e.g. you can delete a complete thread with one command if it is not of interest to you. To turn on threads view click the speech bubble on the left of the column headings of your list of mails
- Be aware of email etiquette (at the very least know the ten most important email rules)
I’m sure there are other useful tips you can share with us, please let us know via the comments.
I don’t think you can divorce email productivity from general work-related productivity. Your tips cannot be take in isolation from how you deal with other sources of input such as phone calls, paper messages, physical visitors, etc. I suspect that the person who can already juggle their daily work has their email under control, while those of us who cannot will not be able to stick to your email tips either…
I might suggest two more tips
12. Keep a separate email address/account for your private life, shopping experiences, clubs etc. I use a Google mail account for this purpose.
13. Your “Sent” folder is a valuable resource, keep it safe. You don’t need to store another copy of what you sent someone, it’s there in your email archives. Just make sure you use sensible Subject lines.
Sebastian,
You are correct, managing email cannot be totally divorced from other forms of communication. However,it’s worth noting that one can’t (easily) screen phone calls an physical visits in the way that one can screen emails. My view is that if something comes in an email it is not really that urgent, people still tend to use a synchronous communication method (phone, instant messaging, IRC etc,) for truly urgent matters.
As for your two additional tips, I agree whole heartedly. In fact I think your point 13. actually includes two important points, which should be split into two to ensure maximum exposure to the second point:
13. Your “Sent” folder is a valuable resource, keep it safe. You don’t need to store another copy of what you sent someone, it’s there in your email archives.
14. Make sure you use sensible Subject lines, and keep each mail applicable to the subject (that means one issue per mail). This enables you to make maximum use of your archives and screening techniques.
Most of this sounds plausible, but I just don’t know if I can wean myself from checking my email. An hour feels like an incredibly long time. It will take me some practice. Plus a huge amount of my work just does amount to answering emails.
Of late, I’ve been implementing a method of using labels in Thunderbird to work with David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) action-management methodology. The labels are: Delete, Archive, Action Required, Wait, Defer (Thunderbird only allows 5). I blast through all of my email by simply applying a label and then sort by labels so that all my action required emails are in one place. The GTD method says that if an action can be done in less than two minutes it should be done immediately. Which explains both why my emails tend to be relatively short and are sent immediately.
I am indebted to a post from 2005 in the entropic principal blog for suggesting this use of Thunderbird.
Unlike Sebastian, I don’t segregate my work/life emails. A thorough application of GTD would argue against such a separation. However, I do sign up to nearly every list that isn’t from my employer, Oxford University Computing Services, or from JISC under my Gmail address. I find this an excellent way to keep down the throughput in Thunderbird which is reserved solely for OSS Watch and emails from my wife (the latter being the important ones
).
Now, can I stay off email for an hour? My heart is beginning to palpitate already just in the time I’ve taken to write this comment. It’s going to be a struggle
At least for me, I get some orders of magnitude more email than phone, paper mail and visitors combined, so dealing with this effectively is a pinch point. Strangely I don’t have a huge compulsion to check mail all the time, but can get lost in it when I do. I too have started trying to follow GTD recently.
Randy: Regarding using Thunderbird for GTD. I’ve been using the Thunderbird 2 betas with the new tagging functionality which allows unlimited lables. It’s great! and I’ve not even lost any mail
I’ve had to restart the beta for memory/cpu usage getting out of hand, but only after 7-10 days use.
I forgot a very important one:
Set up a “Saved search” to look for your name in posts. This way if you are pushed for time you only need to look in there to see the ones that require your attention.
For this to work you need to make sure that list etiquette means that people retain posters names in the quoted replies and, if they wish to attract an individuals attention they mention them by name.