Productivity Tip #4

I was inspired by today's NYTimes to circle back on my productivity tips related to the email deluge that hits your email box each day. If you are suffering through a mountain of email, here are some quick pointers to slay the mountain.

1. Maintain seperate email addresses for seperate purposes.  My Dell.com email is strictly for Dell.  I use my gmail account for all subscriptions.  My personal email is just that.  When I am looking in my inbox I am looking with purpose and less likely to get distracted.
2. Create rules related to the people that matter.  If I get an email from Michael or Mark, it glows red.
3. Create rules for all cc. mail.  The vice of many an office politician, cc. is an annoyance for the most part. So, all my cc. mail goes into a read later bucket.
4. Look at your email 2-3 times a day max.  Never engage in email ping pong if it can be avoided.  Outlook isn't a game.  By focusing your time on email you will motor through it faster, spending less time on correspondence that doesn't matter. "Mencken’s 100,000 letters serve as inspiration: we can handle more e-mail than we think we can, but should do so by attending to it only infrequently, at times of our own choosing."
5. Create automated responses.  I use my signatures for this.  I'm old school believing all email worthy of some response.  So, I have a ton of standardized responses.  I don't need to type "sure, I'd like to meet.  I'm snowed for the next week by Debora can work a time for us to connect" dozens of times a week.  So, it's a signature file.
6. Identify if an email is a task, reading assignment, or quick action.  If it is a task and you are using Outlook, drag it to your tasks folder and make a task out of it.  If a reading assignment, drag to a reading folder for when you do have time to read.  If a quick action, action and delete.
7. Empty your inbox each day.  Never, ever, leave it full and aging.
8. When on vacation, designate a colleague to scan and delete email.  If you have a full box on your return, look at the emails glowing read (see 2.) and delete the rest.  Trust me, if it is that important, they will bug you again.
9. There are plenty of other great thoughts over at lifehacker and other blogs.