Tech Rest

E-mail error ends up on road sign

When officials asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign, they thought the reply was what they needed. Unfortunately, the e-mail response to Swansea council said in Welsh: "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated."

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How to Create a To-Do from an E-mail in Lotus Notes (Email)

Great tip from Ian that help Notes users rapidly move messages from Inbox to Task lists.

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What is Email Snacking? ( & How You Can Avoid It) (Email)

Great thoughts on how to get your Inbox to Zero on a more regular basis.

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Move It So You Won’t Lose It (Email Monday)

When you have more than one screen page of emails in your Inbox, you start to go numb to them. In effect, you lose them.

Many people use their Inbox as a todo list. Since the average person gets over 80 messages a day, the Inbox just doesn't work very well as a todo list: it fills up too fast.

Emptying All Your Inboxes At Once (Email Monday)

Managing your email can feel like bailing water from a sinking boat. The water is coming in faster than you can bail it out. It's even worse when you have multiple Inboxes and you want to get them all to empty. So what can you do if you are like me and you have multiple email addresses that you use all the time? The answer is to consolidate all your mail into one desktop email application.

Why one place? It's so much easier to manage one big list than two or more smaller lists of email. Also, when you use one application all the time you can get lightning fast with it.

Prejudice Is Good (With Email) (Email Monday)

The worst way to manage your email is the best way to work with people. Each person deserves to be treated with respect and not be pre-judged. On the other hand the worst way you can treat your email is to give each one equal value. Many people manage their email on a first come first serve basis. That means that a monthly newsletter gets the same attention as an emergency message from your boss. That's nuts! So what can you do?

First, delete all the messages you can. If your application supports it delete them all at once. In Outlook, I select the first message, then hold down the CTRL key and click all the other ones I want to delete. Next, I press CTRL+Q (to mark them as read) and CTRL+D (to delete them). The ones that I end up deleting are usually not *S*P*A*M but "bacn" (see All We Are Saying for definition).

Then, move lower priority message out of your Inbox without opening them. In Outlook, click on the message, and press CTRL+Q (to mark it read). Then move them to a folder, your calendar or your tasks list. (see The Secret Of The Three Buckets).

Next, forward all the ones you can. In addition, you may want to BCC yourself so you can set a reminder either in your "Waiting For" folder or in a Task.

What you are left with are the messages you need to do something about. For these, do the ones you can in 2 minutes or less and schedule the others based on priority.

The idea is to be prejudiced. You want to give the higher priority messages the attention they deserve. You want to move the lower priority messages out of your Inbox to be dealt with at a time when your energy is lower. I check my high priority messages about once an hour. It could be a week or more before I look at some lower priority messages.

Another tip. Let's say that you look at your Inbox and there are 4 messages that you know you need to look at before the end of the day but can't look at right now. A great way to handle this is to create an appointment with the message for say 4:00 PM. In Outlook, CTRL+CLICK the four messages, then Right-Click and Drag the messages to the Calendar icon. Then select "Move Here As Appointment with Attachment". In a few clicks, you move the messages out of your folder and set a time to follow up.

How about you? How do you handle this dilemma?

See also

• Email - Stop The Insanity
• Dealing With 1155 Messages Before Lunch

Take The 20 Minute Email Challenge (Email Monday)

Are you staying ahead of the curve on managing your emails? How many emails do you get per day? How long does it take you to process them?

The answers to these questions are easy to obtain and vital to your success in the business world.

Here's what to do.

1.    Find out how many messages you get on a given day. Better yet, track how many you get in a week and calculate your daily average.

2.    Set aside 20 minutes to focus on processing your emails.

3.    See how many emails you can process in 20 minutes.

What to do with the results. First, if you would post a comment with how many you did that would be great. Second, you can take the results and book the time you need on your calendar. For instance, let's say that you get about 120 messages per day and you find you can process 40 messages in 20 minutes. You would need to set aside 60 minutes per day to process your messages. So, you might book 30 minutes on your calendar twice a day to go through your email. This is much more efficient than dealing with each message as it comes in.

I first heard about this idea from Sally McGhee's Take Back Your Life!: Using Microsoft  Outlook  to Get Organized and Stay Organized . Her book is a great one to add to your GTD library.

See also

• Get Your Gatekeepers Up
• Scary Email Math

Dealing With 1,155 Messages Before Lunch (Email Monday)

Kelly Forrister, of the David Allen Company, shared a great story that I want to pass along to you. She went on vacation and returned to find 1,155 messages waiting for her in her Inbox (Gasp!).

One thing that it sounds like she did but I want to be a little more specific about is sorting messages. When you have that many, I recommend that you sort your messages first by sender. That helps you get rid of all the *s*p*a*m and non-essentials like newsletters. Then take the remainder and sort by subject line. This helps bring to the top those that might be urgent. And lastly sort by Received so you can deal with what's left on a first come, first serve basis.

I highly recommend that you read the whole story at Simple GTD.

See also

• Fireside Chat On Escape From Email Hell
• Email - Stop The Insanity - Part 1

Favorite Frustrating Email Subject Lines (Email Monday)

It blows my mind that so many people routinely write lousy subject lines. Since the average person reading this gets over 20,000 messages per year (see Scary Email Math ), bad subject lines should be punishable by death (okay maybe not that severe).

I would love to hear some of your favorites. I might even turn it into a standup comedy routine. Somebody should.

Here are a couple of ones to get the conversation started.

The blank subject line. Don't you hate that? You've got a hundred messages in your Inbox and the sender doesn't have the courtesy to put anything in the subject line. I think that poor subject lines are an indication of overblown egos.

Call me. I have a friend who gets about 50 emails per day that need research before she can respond to them. This is the one she hates the most because she then can't do the research until she calls them. How much better would it be if the sender included the info in the subject line to let her know what they need.

Let's talk tomorrow. About what???!!! This one is really bad when you get this from someone you report to. It has you thinking "what did I do?"

So now it's your turn. What are you favorite frustrating subject lines?

See also

• Thanksgiving For Email
• Escape From Email Hell

Thanksgiving For Email (Email Monday)

What's the first word that comes to your mind when you think of email? I hope you didn't say that too loud. Email is the bane of many people's existence. If it is for you, check out the many posts I have on coping with it. However, I am thankful for email.

Email is free. It's a beautiful thing to be able to send an email to a friend on the other side of the world for free! I love getting emails from vendors like Amazon.com and Newegg that let me know the status of my order at each stage of the game. This happens because email is free.

Email is fast. It's amazing that I can email a draft of a blog post to a friend in California, pick up the phone to talk to her about it, and it's already there. In addition, it's easy for me to draft an email while I'm standing in line at Wal-Mart on my Blackberry. That saves me time and helps me not get stressed out by the long wait.

Email is free from time. For us geeks, we call this asynchronous communications. Phone conversations are synchronous. In other words, we are talking at the same time. Thank God that's not the way email works. With email, when I have a thought about something, I can dash off and email and get it off my mind.

Sure, I know email can be a pain but without email mail we couldn't function in this fast-paced multi-faceted world of ours. Take a minute to be thankful for email.

• Get Your Gatekeepers Up
• How Well Do You Get Along With Your Email?

This post also appears on CE On Time .

How Well Do You Get Along With Your Email? (Email Monday)

Most of us have a love-hate relationship towards our email. Many lean more towards the hate side. And some just HATE it.

My book Escape From Email Hell should be out by the end of the year. It's based on best practices I've gleaned from my own experience and those I've come in contact with. On the other hand, I've seen very little data about email management. I hope to begin to change that.

Please take a minute to answer the five question survey by clicking on the link below. At this point I'm using the free version of SurveyMonkey so only the first 100 surveys will be captured. I will share the results in a future post.

Click Here to take survey

Great post about email stress

The great folks over at Ars Technica have a great post about email stress.

The title is E-mail stress slowing down workers, say researches . Check it out. I was surprised at how bad it's getting.

See also

• Escape From Email Hell
• Email - Stop the Insanity

When NOT to use Email

If you send emails, you need to read this. You can download the summary file (pdf) from the site below or from my Downloads list.

ChangeThis :: When You Absolutely, Positively Should NOT Use Email: A Civilized List

See also

• Get Your Gatekeepers Up

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Get Your Gatekeepers Up

Do you have a secretary? Not I but maybe you do. Even so, having your electronic gatekeepers on guard helps cut down on interruptions.

Earlier today I sent a message to a friend and received this "Out of Office" reply:

Thank you for your email.  I will be responding to emails between 11:00 & 1:00 and after 3:00 pm.

A thing of beauty! This helps take email management to a new level. Most people know that responding to emails in blocks of time is more efficient be few do it. What this reply does so well is that it sets reasonable expectations of when you will respond.

Another idea you may want to try is setting your phone so that all calls role to voice mail. This works really well for me.

So get your gatekeepers up and get more rest!

See also:

• Email - Stop the Insanity - Part 1

• Email - Stop the Insanity - Part 2

• Email - Stop the Insanity - Part 3

Email - Stop the Insanity - Part 3

Declare Email Amnesty Day!

I heard this idea several weeks ago on a TWiT podcast. If you are drowning in email, this may be a way out that appeals to you. Keep in mind this is a DESPERATE measure and should not be considered by the faint at heart.

So here's the idea:

• Pick a day in the not too distant future.
• On that day, email everyone in your address book and let them know that as of that date you are declaring Email Amnesty.
• Explain that you will be deleting all your old email and that if they need something from you they must send you another email.
• Delete (or move to an archive) your emails.
• Dance and shout at your new found freedom.
• That's it!

For most people, you don't want to make a habit of this.

And . . . if you don't develop a system that works for you, you'll be drowning again.

So . . . take a deep breath, declare Email Amnesty and vow never to be in that shape again.

Stop The Insanity!

See also:

• Email - Stop the Insanity - Part 1

• Email - Stop the Insanity - Part 2

Email – Stop the Insanity – Part 2

Tasks For GTD Titans!

From Part 1, you'll remember that I end up with only two buckets (Calendar and Tasks) for all my action items:. If it doesn't have to be at a specific time it ends up on the Task List for me.

To move an email to the Task list (using Outlook), I right-click and drag it, and drop it on the Task icon. Next,  I choose the last option which moves the whole email intact (including attachments) and converts it to a Task. Then I enter a prefix (A:, F:, or P:), press tab and use Speed Dating to enter the date, select a Category, and press CTRL+S to Save. I know it sounds complicated but it only takes a few seconds to accomplish.

For more information see Michael Linenbeger's Total Workday Control Using Microsoft Outlook: The Eight Best Practices of Task and E-Mail Management. Most of these ideas started with him.

If you're an Outlook user, chances are you don't use the Tasks. I didn't before reading Linenberger's book. Out of the box, the Task List is almost useless. Once you get it set up right, you won't want to live without it.

I have over 300 Tasks on my list. But . . . on a daily basis, I only look at the ones I want to see for that day. Also, I mark the ones that must be done on a certain day as urgent. I rarely have more than 3 urgent items in a day.

Reading David Allen's Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, was life changing for me. Reading Linenberger's book moved me to an even higher level of productivity.

Try the process and see if it's not faster for you.

Let me know how it works for you or what you do that works better.

See also:

• Email - Stop the Insanity - Part 1

• Email - Stop the Insanity - Part 3

Email – Stop the Insanity – Part 1

If you leave messages in your Inbox, you are insane. Okay, there I've said it.

Every message left in your Inbox adds psychic weight to you. And this weight can be awfully heavy over time. On average, information workers (that's you) get over 20,000 messages in a year (see Scary Email Math ). If you leave even a small percentage of your messages in your Inbox, you can easily accumulate thousands of them. I have personally seen one with over 12,000 messages. That's a lot of weight!

So . . . what can you do?

1. Sort your message in a way that makes sense to you.
2. If you have more than a couple of screen pages, deal with multiple messages at a time (until you make a significant dent in them). If you only have a few screen pages, start at the top and work to the bottom.
3. Block out as many distractions as possible and set aside time to process your emails (20 – 30 minutes is good).
4. Delete all the ones you possibly can.
5. File the ones you need or may need to look at later but that don't require action. Don't hesitate, if you think you might need it later, file it. Don't waste much time deciding to file or delete, just file it. You can always delete it later.
6. Forward all the ones that belong to someone else. I also BCC myself on these if I need to add them to a Waiting For list. I know that I have a copy in my Sent items but I tend to forget they are in there. BCCing works like magic for me because it ends up as another message in my Inbox.
7. Do all the ones you can do in 2 minutes or less.
8. Now, your stack should be reduced by well over half. But . . . you now have the ones that will require more work.

Ok . . . so what to do with the ones that are left?

• If they are ones that really need to be done now (depending on who they are from or what needs to be done) then do them.
• The rest of the messages need to be moved to the calendar (if they have to be done at a specific time) or to the task list (everything else).
• Also, I like to prefix message that require only one action (Action items) with "A:". Those that are projects (require more than one action) with "P:". I take the messages that need Follow Up (a.k.a. Waiting For) and prefix them with "F:".
• Your Inbox should now be empty!

Hey . . . what about Someday / Maybe items?

I find that Someday / Maybe for me becomes a black hole. I put them in there and I never revisit them. What I do now is decide when I want to revisit them (usually this is 3 – 12 months away). I use Speed Dating to quickly create a task 6 months out to look at the item then. I found that when I was using a "normal" Someday / Maybe list I couldn't trust that I would visit it when I need to. This way I only have two buckets for action items of all kinds: Calendar and Tasks.

If you are on Outlook user (97 – 2007), download 7 Secrets of Light Speed Email Management , to see short cuts on how to make this happen.

I once used this system to process 2 days worth of email in 10 minutes (Scout's Honor!).

See also:

• Email - Stop the Insanity - Part 2

• Email - Stop the Insanity - Part 3

 

Scary Email Math

The average information worker gets 87 emails per day.If you round that down to 80 and multiply it by 5 days, that's 400 per week. Multiply that by 50 weeks in a year, and you get 20,000 emails. Yikes! That's why a small increase in email  efficiency can yield big changes.

I've summarized the way I manage my emails (a la Getting Things Done) on a mind map. To download a copy, right-click and chose Save Link As:

Ask Your Inbox the Right Questions (.pdf)

Ask Your Inbox the Right Questions (Mind Map)

Enjoy!

This post also appears on CE On Time .