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Five Tips to Boost Your
Email Productivity
-by Marsha D. Egan,
CPCU, PCC
Note: if you
would like to see more on email productivity, please visit our
companion website, Egan Email Solutions-
Email is driving us all
crazy! Here are some tips that should add hours to your days,
weeks or months!
**Turn off Automatic Send/Receive
Many of us are distracted by our received e-mails -- they appear
at all times of the day! By turning off the automatic
send/receive option, you can start to manage when you receive
your e- mail., rather than having it managing you.
**Schedule times to receive e-mail
By selecting an option whereby you receive your e-mail every
hour, or even every two hours, you will be able to consolidate
your work. Very little is truly urgent; those urgent items are
usually handled by telephone or personal visit. If you feel
uncomfortable going for two hours without receiving e-mail,
watch your e-mail for a few days to see if and when any of those
critical items you might have missed, by waiting an hour, show
up, then decide how long can go between scheduled
receives.
**Minimize e-mail interruptions
When you recognize that every time you look up to check e-mail,
it is most likely an interruption of the task you are currently
performing, it will help you understand how much time not only
e-mail, but the interruption is taking from your day. It is
common belief that it takes at least four minutes to recover
from any interruption, so if you are constantly looking at your
e-mail, you are constantly interrupting yourself, and could
possibly be adding unnecessary HOURS to your day or week.
**Use the subject line more effectively
By putting detailed information in the subject line, you will
enable others to properly sort their work. Many of us have a
tendency to use a general subject, such as "Tuesday Meeting."
Instead, your subject may be more effective if it states "Please
bring the attached handout to the Tuesday meeting."
**Unconventional use for auto signatures
You can use the auto signature feature of your e-mail program to
not only insert an auto signature, but you can use it for any
sentences or paragraphs you might use regularly. While you can
use your primary signature as your default signature, you can
create many others for situations such as this. As an example,
if you have recently changed your address, and you know you will
occasionally need to notify people of that address, you can
create an auto
signature with the new information, and simply insert it into
the body of your e-mail message. This saves a lot of keying!
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COPYRIGHT: Copyright 2006
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