How many e-mail messages are sitting in your inbox? In my experience, I have seen people sitting with hundreds, even thousands of messages in their inbox. How often have you opened a mail message and thought, “Hmmm, not sure what to do with this, I’ll deal with it later!” – And promptly closed the message. If you do this over and over again it does not take long to end up with hundreds of messages in your inbox.
E-Mail is an information system. To manage your e-mail effectively, you need to decide what information you keep. The information can fall into 2 categories
- Action information is information that you must have to complete an action
- Reference information is information that is not required to complete an action but that you want to keep in case you need it later
A large amount of e-mail people receive is reference information. It is therefore important to have a method of quickly and effectively transferring these messages from your inbox to your reference system (e-mail folders, My Documents, web storage)
The following is a suggested method of managing e-mail messages in your inbox.
When to do it?
Start by setting a regular time each day to process your e-mail with the goal of emptying your inbox. Schedule a time of the day and use it for processing your mail and nothing else.
How to do it?
Start at the beginning. Or in the case of your inbox, start at the top and work down. Remember, you can sort your inbox by date, subject or person to help you through this. If your e-mail client has a preview option, then enable it. This will help you to read the message without opening it.
What to do with it?
A good model for processing your e-mail messages is the “Four Ds for Decision Making” model which helps you quickly decide what to do with each message and how to remove it from your inbox.
1. Delete it
2. Do it
3. Delegate it
4. Defer it
Delete It
On average, statistics have shown that at least 50% of what you receive can be deleted. Some people are concerned about deleting items for fear that they might need the information at some later time. When processing your e-mail ask yourself the following questions
1. Does the message relate to a meaningful objective or project you are currently working on? If not you can probably delete it
2. Does the message contain information you can find elsewhere (e.g. websites, blogs)? If so, delete it
3. Does the message contain information that you will refer to within the next six months? If not, delete it
4. Does the message contain information that you are required to keep for legal reasons. If not, delete it
Do it
If you can’t delete it, then ask yourself
1. What specific action do I need to take?
2. Can I DO IT in less than 2 minutes? – If so, then just do it
In less than 2 minutes, you could file the message, reply to it or make a phone call.
Delegate it
If you are in the position to, can you delegate the message to someone else? If you can, try to compose the delegating message in less than 2 minutes. Once you have delegated the message, can you delete the original message?
Defer it
If you cannot delete it, do it in 2 minutes or delegate it then the action required is only something that you can do and takes longer than 2 minutes. At this time, you are only processing e-mail so you need to defer it. Deferring it may mean creating an appointment to do the work, creating a task to remind you and prioritise the work or use other features of your e-mail client that will help you to organise your messages.
Using these simple steps can help you to take control of your inbox.