The Timeless Solution for Managing Your Inbox – Part 3 of 4

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As David Allen, leading American productivity consultant and famous for his Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology says, the timeless solution for managing your ‘stuff’, regardless of whatever new technology is available, is having: 

  • a process for capturing the things that need your attention

  • the mental rigour to clarify and decide what the things mean to you

  • a trusted system for organising the resulting to-do items

  • the personal discipline to take action

And this is so very relevant to way you handle email each day. 

As explained in the previous post, the first step in the proven 4D process is to Triage your inbox. This first pass over the inbox involves fast decision-making and relatively shallow thinking. The second pass is to plan your workload for the 30-40% of emails that remain after your Triage sweep.

This second step is a separate, slower process that involves deeper thinking, and again making one of the 4 possible decisions;

1.      Delete

2.      Deal with it (if the next action will take 2 minute or less)

3.      Delegate to someone else

4.      Decide

·  Where to file or store the email

·  When to do the task

This decision-making can be made easier by scheduling specific times into your calendar to process and organise these email tasks, allowing your mind time and space for the deeper level thinking required. Email is a legitimate and important aspect of your workload that you must keep up with, yet almost nobody blocks out time in their schedule to attend to it.

We schedule time for meetings, phone appointments, tele-conferences and webinars etc. Each of these can be defined as ‘a conversation with one or more other people’. They are important. We block time in our calendar for them. As a result, we tend to keep up with them.

So why not email? Isn’t it also ‘a conversation’?

Meetings etc are a verbal conversation (with or without a visual component as well), whereas email is a digital or written conversation. More and more of our conversations have shifted from verbal channels to written ones such as email, text, Linked In, Facebook etc. However, it takes more mental effort and focus to be effective with written conversations than with verbal ones. Yet we don’t give dedicated time and attention to email and then wonder why we struggle to keep up all our email – doh!

By blocking specific times in the calendar, we can transform email from a reactive, unplanned and distracted conversation into one we give our full attention to, at a dedicated time . . .  allowing us to handle email both quicker and more effectively.

The times allocated in your calendar are for three different activities. I suggest the following pattern for your email processing. If the Next Action can be done in;

1.      two minutes or less - do it immediately, the first time you touch it in the inbox

2.      between two and fifteen minutes – tackle the task at a dedicated time on your allocated due date

3.      more than fifteen minutes – convert the email to a calendar item to be tackled at a specific date and time. Once you need to spend 15 minutes or more to perform a task, it will prove too hard to stay focused on it in an inbox environment with all the other distractions, including new messages arriving. Converting this piece of work into the calendar helps you to make better quality and realistic decisions about when you have time for it, and integrates it with the rest of your workload, timeframes and commitments. 

Feedback from participants who have learnt this new process in recent Revolutionise Your Inbox workshops says that they love the shift from a working style that had become more and more inbox-based, interruption-driven and reactive to one that is calendar-based, plan-driven and proactive.

 

“First time ever, I am walking out the door with all emails attended to, and my actions cleared! I managed to get away with only checking my emails twice today – probably not realistic long term, but vast improvement of the 15+ times a day I used to – felt much more in control.”

Nikki Gilbertson | Operations Manager | genU Karingal St Laurence

 

“Can I just say that you have completely changed my life at work after attending your training on Tuesday. Even less than 2 days after and living in my Calendar and not in my in-box I am less stressed and feel more in control than I have since starting here 4 and half years ago. To not worry about having to remember everything is beyond fantastic. Can’t say thank you enough!!“

Jenny Juschkat | Manager Dental Services | Latrobe Community Health

“Everyone (even two staff who are hard to please) have advised that the training was the ‘best training they have done’ in years.”

Luke Doherty | Manager | Shared & Respite Living | Karingal St Laurence

 

What each of these diligent, hard-working people have learnt is a new ‘cutting edge’ process for managing their inbox that works in today’s fast-paced and hectic business environment.

You see, most of us are using pretty much the same skillset to manage email today as when we first starting using email 15, 20 or even 25 years ago. But in that time, the volumes, demands, workload and urgency of email has increased exponentially. The 2 step 4D process I’ve outline in this and previous posts will elevate your skills so you are better equipped keep up with all the demands of your email these days.

If you’re interested to learn more about how to get control of your email, revolutionise the inbox, reduce your stress and be more productive in the workplace, I’d welcome the opportunity to show you how to do this – for yourself, for your team or for your next conference. Get in touch via email, or better still give me a call.

Steuart Snooks