Time and Email Management

Time management and particularly the information overload that comes from your bulging email inbox is a problem that arises frequently for many people.

Just to emphasise the point I came across an interesting snippet of information recently that it takes you 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after you have been interrupted by an email (or, I suppose, any other interference).

So if you check your email every 5 minutes then that's about 1 hour per day that you think you are working but are not actually operating at your maximum capacity.  Even worse if you respond to that beep every time a tweet lands in your Tweetdeck.

So there is every chance that a scatterbrain approach to your work is going to take 8 hours or more per week out of your working time.  You think you are working Monday to Friday but in reality you don't get past Thursday tea time!

Solutions?  My own include the classic broad brush approach.

First, switch it off!  Set aside specific times to deal with your email maybe twice a day.  Leave it off the rest of the time to allow you to deal with your priorities – not those imposed on your by somebody else.

Second: use the unsubscribe link. If you are already having problems dealing with the volume of email then it makes sense to reduce the flow.  So unsubscribe from the least important sources of email, newsletters, reminders,special offers blah, blah..  If you don't have time to do anything about them then why bother spending the time to read them?

Third: use an email client to automate the process of filtering your inbox.  My preference is for Gmail because the effect of using filters to set up rules has a cumulative effect.  It may take a minute to set up a filter but if it takes that email (and every one that follows it from the same source) out of your inbox forever – or at least until you want to go looking for it – then that is a great investment.

Just my thoughts – but if you want the academic background then you can find out a whole lot more about the effects of email on how your manage your time at http://www.drthomasjackson.com/

Other email management articles

• Manage eMail Overload By Using A Temporary Inbox With Re:Subj (makeuseof.com)
• Principles of email management (informata.blogspot.com)

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