I sprained my back and was away from work for 3 days. Most colleagues came to offer me their sympathies, recommendations and generally good advice on what I should do, which acupuncturist I should visit, what kinds of "heaty" food I should avoid etc... but added to the mix was this one... "You should blog about it".
My instant response to that was sure! It will be HOW NOT TO READ THE 700 EMAILS IN YOUR INBOX!
But seriously, how do you separate mere traffic noise from the real siren? How can someone remain effective without being considered 'unreachable' by not reading an average of 200+ emails a day? Think about it! Reading 200+ emails at an average rate of 1 minute an email = 3-4 hours of work = half a day gone!
So I asked around, did some googling and came up with these 3 strategies:
(1) Filter: How to differentiate immediately if a mail was sent to you directly, or if you are just on the CC. list. For how to, Click HERE.
(2) Be Honest: I'm never ever going to catch up with all the mails that were sent. So instead of feeling guilty, I should just get over it and stop trying to be perfect. So there, all you unimportant mails, I'm going to sentence you to DELETE!
(3) Avoid Boomerangs: Yay! Now that I'm left with 80+ emails after filtering and being honest, I want to make sure that these emails I respond to don't boomerang back so I'm going to (a) communicate strictly to those who needs a response from me (i.e not "Reply to All") and (b) communicate so clearly, nobody will feel they have to send me a "Reply".
Cheers! Happy Weekend! Don't try breaking your back and a toast to a better 'Outlook'!!!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
One thing I did when I was in Nokia which was very effective.
After a long vacation (my longest was 3 weeks), I would call each one who sent me emails into my office/cubicle (the ones who were located in Singapore) and show them my inbox.
For example, I would call a certain Siew Kuan into my office and say, "You've sent me 40 emails while I was away. Which of these can I delete immediately?".
I was usually left with 0-2 emails per person.
Serious.
Post a Comment