Getting Email Done Part 1 - Getting a Life Outside of Email
September 12th, 2008 Michael SliwinskiCategories | Getting Started | Getting Things Done | Tips - How To's
This is the first article of the two I have prepared for you regarding dealing with email – this one is about tips and tricks of getting a life outside of email. The second part will be about key practices of getting email done and processing to empty.
First thing – let’s try to get a life… a life Now, the big question – how to deal with email? How to reply to all of these hundreds of emails that come flooding your email inbox daily?
Outside of Email.
There was a time when email was ruling my world – I’d have my email program popping up whenever I got a new message, I’d go and check my email messages every 5-10 minutes, I’d read some email messages three to five times…
And I couldn’t get most of my stuff done.
I had to take some drastic measures to get my life back and convert my Email from being my king… to being just a tool for communication…. ‘cos that’s what email is. It’s just a tool (or one of the tools) for communicating…
Here are three tips that work for me when fighting email addiction:
Step 1. Disable email auto-checking
Don’t have email check you – it’s you who should be checking email. Try to check email manually every hour or even every two hours if you’re so brave. It’s really a great thing for a start.
Step2. Remove auto-preview of emails
Many desktop programs like “Outlook” or “Thunderbird” or “The Bat” have an auto-preview pane where you can see the email message when you just move between messages in your inbox. This made me crazy. I was reading some messages many, many times…
When you disable this feature, you’d have to click on the email subject to actually “open the message” and read it. This is a real change – from just scanning the messages you’re deciding to open a message if you’re ready for it.
Step 3. Don’t create too many email folders.
If you’re an organization freak like me, you’d create email folders for anyone you’d correspond with.
Why would you do that? Why would you spend your day organizing and moving email folders? Are you a librarian or a busy professional? Stop today – just use the search feature to find the message you need.
That’s all there is to it for now – try to implement these three simply techniques as they worked perfectly for me:
1. Disable email auto-checking
2. Get rid of the message auto-preview
3. Stop creating folders – use search
Make sure you try these and also let me know in the comments about your tips and tricks that help you regain your life outside of email.
I only check e-mails twice a day for work related e-mails and once a day for personal. I’ve found it helpful to avoid to many interuptions - I can now concentrate properly on Twitter
Maybe one more rule (I learned with Michael site): when you decide to open an email, before do it, decide if you should simply discharge it; if not, open but act; do not re-read it 5 times along the day. Analyse and take a “GTD” action: answer now (2 minutes rule) or put it in one action folder (where you have all your actions, emails or not).
The 3 Michael rules grows your time maybe 1 hour a day, at least. Like was for me.
I’ll add one tip that will probably will be tough for most people:
- Don’t check the email first thing in the morning.
If you do that, it’s like you start the day on somebody else’s agenda, not on your own.
Instead start working on your projects and check your email only after two hours or so.
Another method that I’ve found helpful for my system (and may be useful for anyone else whose job requires monitoring email for one reason or another):
If you do regularly receive emails that require frequent monitoring of incoming messages, set up multiple accounts for yourself.
For me, this means I can have “interrupt-me” account for things like customer service requests that should be dealt with ASAP. I leave that one open, but I’m not distracted when less urgent messages come in. I actually run another account I check a several times a day, and 2 I only check a few times a week.
The inconvenience actually saves me time since I’m much less likely to just hit refresh and distract myself than when I ran all my mail through a single client.
Folders can be useful if you set up filters that remove non-urgent messages from your inbox and store them for later reading as well. I dump a lot into a “to read” folder automatically if it’s a newsletter I want to browse but isn’t important enough that I should have to look at when processing my email.
搞定我们的电子邮件：第一部分…
通过禁用电子邮件自动检查、禁用电子邮件预览功能、停止创建电子邮件文件夹，使用邮件搜索功能等技巧，摆脱电子邮件的控制，重新回到原来的生活中来。这是“搞定我们的电子邮件”系…
Hmm, I’m not sure I agree with #2 (preview pane). I find that the easiest way to quickly process email with fewer keystrokes. I use Apple Mail and no longer look at the inbox. I have smart mailboxes for Unread, Review (flagged and up to a week old), Flagged (flagged and over a week old).
Whenever I’m at a good break between actions, I go over the Unread email and quickly decide a. if I can reply quickly (and do so), b. if I need to reply / process later (flag it), c. let it just be filed for reference (based on rules and folders), d. delete it. Even 30 or 40 emails takes only a minute or two and then it’s back to my agenda and my actions.
If you check your email first thing in the morning you start the day on someone else’s agenda? You mean like your bosses?
If you work for yourself, its a fine idea, but if you have someone else who may somewhat direct your priorities, you probably ought to check on that persons input.
It comes down to being able to not jump at everything that comes through your inbox. It’s like feeling the obligation to answer the phone just because it rings. Over a decade ago we turned the answering machine on and the ringer off. We answer phone calls when we feel like it. A majority of the people calling we don’t want to talk to directly anyways.
Thanks for great comments!
@DanGTD - great tip, I’m trying to actually implement this and not to be tempted to check email first thing in the morning.
@Sean - switching off auto-preview pane was a relief and really helped me focus. Myabe it’s just me. your mileage may vary.
@Doreen - you’re right, but i find that sometimes people are over-filtering stuff so one should watch out and draw the line there.
I agree with Sean - shutting off the preview pane would be a major productivity drain. For the most part, things that I don’t really need to read are either automatically or very quickly being placed into other handling buckets. But for the many, many “2-minute rule” emails I receive (dozens daily), adding an extra few seconds to each one of them to open it would add up to several minutes daily.
Also, there’s another good reason not to have too many folders besides the general issue of sorting them. If you have few enough folders (43, ironically, on my computer), you can file them with a single mouse motion — never have to expand or scroll in order to file. It adds up.
One more thing… related to the preview pane:
My new laptop is widescreen and I love it. I can now make the preview pane vertical instead of horizontal. This allows me to see more message headers, as well as more of the email itself — between the two, a definite productivity boost.
@Michael
I’m curious - what do you mean by overfiltering? Do you mean in terms of trying to create a full, hierarchical filing system automatically? Or that filtering tends to lead to creating more inboxes than necessary and causing too much processing (or too many “check for emergencies” moments in too many places)?
Hi,
I think that a very important principle on email is you stop checking it all the time and defining for example to go through your mails 3 times a day or so. When you check your mail process them sequentially from top to the bottom and don’t cherry pic on those you like. Otherwise you end up with the difficult ones only widely opening up the door for procrastination.
I am writing a blog with about 200 concrete tips on how to save time every day in case you want to read more.
http://memytime.wordpress.com/