Top Three Tips for Managing Email - Tip 2 - Use the 4D Process

One of the biggest challenges we face each day is how to manage our email and the workload it delivers. For most of us, our workflow is centred around ongoing conversations that are fuelled by unstructured and unscheduled messages delivered through various digital communication tools, especially email.

 Here are my top 3 tips for managing this aspect of your daily work:

  1. Handle Each Email Only Once

  2. Use the 4D Process

  3. Triage Your Inbox

Tip 2 - The 4D Process

Every email you read requires you to make a decision. The 4D methodology is a powerful and proven method to process any new inputs you handle, whether it’s the in tray, a text message, a Teams message or an email.

However . . .  the default view presented by Outlook and Gmail has a number of problems and disadvantages when it comes to helping us capture the results of our thinking and decision making. Here’s why.

Both Outlook and Gmail have a default view that has three basic components;

  • a list of folders

  • a column of emails

  • a reading or preview pane (see images below)

The problems with these views are that we find ourselves;

  • Constantly scrolling up and down the screen, reading and re-reading emails

  • Cherry-picking the one that needs action rather than working methodically from top to bottom

  • Can’t easily see what action is needed or when it needs that action

  • Use lots of mental resource to prioritise and keep track of each email (and the priority changes after every email you look at!)

  • Don’t feel well organized and have a constant low-level of anxiety

 The solution to these problems is to use a consistent, reliable, repeatable process that takes minimal time and energy and captures WHAT we need, stores it WHERE we need it and brings it back to our attention WHEN we need it.

Process the Inbox from Top to Bottom

When processing the inbox, we should go through our email starting at the top of the screen and working our way down through each email, one at a time. As we look at each email, we make one of four possible decisions about it – the powerful and proven 4D method.

These 4D’s are:

  1. Delete the email

  2. Deal with it straight away (using the 2 minute rule – see explanation here)

  3. Delegate it to someone else

  4. Decide what next action is needed and schedule when to take that action

The way to revolutionise your inbox is to reconfigure your default view of the inbox so that you are able to easily capture and see the results of the thinking and decision making you have already done, without having to go back a read the same emails time and time again.

Next Step

In the next blog post, I will explain Triage Your Inbox.

Learn More

You can learn more about how to handle each email only once (and the 4D process) by joining my FREE Revolutionise Your Inbox Overview & Refresher session on Wed 18 Sep 2024 at 12.30pm AEST.
Click here to see the details and register for the FREE Refresher.

 
Steuart Snooks