Follow These 3 Email Management Tips… Spend Less Time in Your Inbox
Nothing affects your office productivity more than hours spent aimlessly trying to sort through your overflowing inbox. Walking into the office in the morning and immediately being met with multiple emails requiring your response can be jarring, and it doesn’t allow you to immediately tackle your to-do list. So how can you spend less time in your busy inbox and more time on productive tasks? Start by implementing these 3 email management tips from your Professional Organizer in NYC.
If a quick response will do, then do it! Instead of reading your new emails and saving them in your inbox until you have time to respond, train yourself to process the emails that require very little response quickly. If you can respond to an email in under two minutes, do it immediately. Many emails just require a response that they have been received, or to verify that you understand the task and it will be handled. Respond quickly, add the new task to your task manager and move on. Don’t let those emails clutter your inbox! If you don’t respond, you’ll find that the senders may send MORE emails asking for you to confirm receipt. This just takes up more of your time…and of theirs!
Schedule time to respond to emails delivering tasks. Do you have an email that requires some research or a much more detailed response? Block time on your calendar to address these issues. If the task is taking longer than anticipated, send a brief update email with your intended completion date.
Create canned responses. If you find yourself responding to emails frequently with the same response, it’s time to create a canned response. Rather than recreate the wheel every single time someone asks the same question, you can fall back on already created responses. Create a series of emails that can be used to address specific situations, and then save them in your email drafts, in a Word document, or wherever is easiest for you to access. Remember, you can still take just a few moments to personalize these canned responses before sending them.
When you apply these 3 simple email management tips to your work day routine, you’ll find yourself spending less time in your inbox and more time on important tasks on your to-do list. Download this Professional Organizer in NYC’s FREE Email Management Tip Sheet to get more email management tips to simplify your workday!