SmallBizResource Blog -- Productivity

Owning Up to My E-Mail Madness

Posted by Gayle Kesten Monday, Aug 18, 2008, 01:56 PM ET

The only mess bigger than the one in my basement following four kids gone wild is the one staring me down from Outlook.

Not that the problem didn't exist long before my three niece and nephews rediscovered their only-child cousin's long-forgotten toys. From the multiple Google Alerts and e-newsletters I signed up for, to story and product pitches, client and colleague correspondence, and just general BS among friends, Aunt Gayle now has close to 600 unread/partially read/read-but-just-hanging-out messages in my inbox.

And that's following a concerted effort to delete the dated stuff. I've ditched more than 2,000 messages in the past few weeks.

I'm sure you're just as aware as I am about some basic ways to manage your inbox. For example, I have certain topics filter directly into designated folders to help keep me organized. But no amount of technology can make me open those folders to read their contents on a regular basis. On Monday I tell myself I have the whole week to see what's going on; by Thursday I convince myself I'll go through the messages over the weekend.

Next week is a vacation week for me. While I don't intend to do any "real" work, I am going to plow through my e-mail, take note of bloggable ideas, reply to anyone who might have slipped through the cracks (please accept my apologies in advance), and then DELETE, DELETE, DELETE.

Even though we're a full four months away from making New Year's resolutions, once I'm caught up my plan is to take to heart the following piece of advice. It makes sense to me, so I thought it was worthwhile passing along:

"Process e-mail, don’t check it: Processing your e-mail inbox takes time. You have to read each e-mail and then determine what you're going to do with it. That may mean replying, but it also may mean deleting, filing or designating time at a later date to deal with it. All too often, we'll check our e-mail on our way out the door when we only have two minutes, or when we're in the middle of some other task with a pressing deadline. This is the road to the inbox with 6,327 messages. Whether you handle e-mail once a day, twice a day or every hour doesn’t matter -- but read and address, don’t 'check' it. Give yourself enough time to deal with all of the messages."

Is your inbox out of control? How do you stay on top of it? Let me know.

Productivity