Email Process

 I’ve experimented with the following process and want to share it along with a few rules and commonplace tools that help me stay productive, meaningful, and efficient in my email exchanges. The first time you do this, it could take several hours since you may have a lot of clean up to do. But after the initial work, you’ll be able to move quickly. Typically I schedule 30 minutes in the morning, at mid-day, and in the afternoon to do email. Here’s how I use that time:

1. Send: I start my timer and begin by writing emails I had planned to send. This often includes follow-ups to meetings, thank-you notes, questions, and scheduling and other requests. I do this first so that if someone gets back to me immediately I have time to respond while I’m still in my 30-minute email period.

2. Delete: Next, I quickly glance through the “subject” and “from” lines on the emails in my inbox and immediately delete the ones I know I don’t want to waste time reading, including marketing emails and impersonal blasts I haven’t requested. This step just takes a few seconds but drastically reduces my email bulk.

3. Respond: I do my best to answer every single email that comes directly to me, even if it means just writing “Thank you.” Since picking through emails to choose which to answer first wastes time, I start with the most recent and work my way down. At this point I don’t click on any links in emails and I don’t read lengthy articles; I save that for step 5 below.

4. File: Once I open an email, I don’t leave it in my inbox. I found that when I did leave emails in my inbox, I’d re-read them repeatedly each time I opened my email, and each time I’d waste more time trying to decide how to handle it. So I either delete it or move it to another folder I’ve set up — waiting, read, someday, travel, client-specific. Every time I go through my email, my goal is to empty my inbox.

5. Read and follow up: In whatever time I have left before my timer goes off, I go through my non-inbox folders, reading through newsletters, clicking on links, and following up on emails in my “waiting” file.

End: When my countdown timer sounds, I close out my email program. Once I’m done, I don’t return to my email — on any device — until my next scheduled session.

As I go through this process, I try not to use email to give someone negative feedback, and I rarely respond to negative feedback over email. Email is a great tool for transactional conversations (Where should we have lunch?), sharing information (Here’s that file, there’s someone I want you to meet), or showing appreciation (You spoke powerfully in that meeting, I’m touched by your support — thank you). For anything else, you’re better off calling or talking to someone face to face. I also do my best never to go back and forth with someone on email about something more than two or three times. If it’s gone that far, it’s usually a better idea to pick up the phone.

There are a few commonplace tools I use that I have found helpful in moving through emails quickly:

Signatures: Most email programs have the capability to create multiple signatures that you can choose to appear at the bottom of an email. I have customized several signatures that I use as responses to common emails I receive. For example, I have a pre-written reply to people who ask about joining my company, want me to review their book, express appreciation for something I’ve written, etc. I often customize those emails based on the sender, but the bulk of my response is already written.

Rules: Most email programs also have rules in which you can automatically send emails that fit certain criteria directly to other folders. For example, when I send out my weekly email linking people to a new article I’ve written, I receive several “out of office” replies. I set up a rule that sends any email with “out of office” in the subject line directly to trash. That way I don’t have to spend any time processing it.

Timer: This is essential to staying within my 30-minute time frame. When I didn’t use a timer it was too easy to just keep going.

Management Hack - Time Boundaries and Time Blocking

From HBR this article by Elizabeth Grace Saunders:

Meetings that run long or unexpected requests from colleagues can prevent you from getting an important task done, make you leave work late, or even disrupt family time. How can you set and communicate boundaries so that you feel your time is respected? Start with your calendar. Block out times when you’re commuting, taking your kids to school, or when you’re getting focused work done, making sure you’re marked as unavailable. Next, ensure that you’re setting meetings for an appropriate amount of time, and stick to a focused agenda. If you’re not running the meeting, tell your colleagues that you have a hard stop. You also need to manage communications. Make your preferred way of communicating — for example, email versus Slack — clear with your colleagues, and respond on your schedule, when possible. Most messages can wait! Of course, you can’t always set meetings based on your needs or dictate how people communicate with you. But the goal is to find limits that are polite on the outside and make you feel calm on the inside.

Management Hacks - Distraction

From Harvard Business Review article by Maura Thomas, this admonition to  "investigate yourself"

Dealing with endless distractions at work can be exhausting and make you feel like you never get anything done. To avoid burnout — and to accomplish thoughtful, important work — you need to combat interruptions, especially ones you’re creating yourself, such as checking your email every five minutes. Pay attention to how often and why you’re allowing your attention to be stolen. Make a note every time you find yourself switching away from a task before your intended stopping point. Then think about what caused you to be distracted and jot that down, too. Once you become aware of these cues, find ways to overcome them. For example, ask yourself what you could do to stop constantly checking Twitter on your phone, or how you could keep others from interrupting you when you’re trying to focus. Record these ideas, then look for opportunities to try them out. Keep a record of which ones were successful and which weren’t. Over time, you’ll end up with a list of tactics that will help keep you focused and give you a greater sense of accomplishment.

Time-boxing

Harvard Business Review article on Time-Boxing by Marc Zao-Sanders speaking about the importance of ditch to-do lists for time-boxing.

I converted from my religiously observed to-do list (daily work plan) to this calendar system, also known as timeboxing (a term borrowed from agile project management). All five of Markovitz’s criticisms of to-do lists have manifested for me. In a study we conducted of 100 productivity hacks, timeboxing was ranked as the most useful. And over the last few years, I have also discovered several additional benefits of timeboxing, which I would like to share.
First, timeboxing into a calendar enables the relative positioning of work. If you know that a promotional video has to go live on a Tuesday and that the production team needs 72 hours to work on your copy edits, then you know when to place the timebox. In fact, you know where to place the timebox: it’s visual, intuitive, obvious. Working hard and trying your best is sometimes not actually what’s required; the alternative — getting the right thing done at the right time — is a better outcome for all.

Read whole article here.

Set Aside Time for Important Projects

adapted from Harvard Business Review"Getting Your Team to Do More Than Meet Deadlines"  link

When it comes to our to-do lists, many of us prioritize checking off tasks that are easiest to complete or are due first, regardless of importance. The result? Some important tasks never get done. Managers can help employees by having them set aside proactive time for work that is important but not urgent. Ask them to block time on their calendar each week. For these periods to be effective, they must be distraction-free: Shut off email, Slack, and your phone. While it might be tempting to answer a quick request from a client, this sense of being “always on” negatively affects productivity. Managers might even consider blocking off this time on employees’ calendars themselves. Survey your team to gauge interest, or try a six-week experiment to learn how much time you should block off, or which days work best. Sure, employees could do this for themselves, but having a manager make clear that proactive time is important sets the expectation for focused work and prevents critical projects from falling through the cracks.