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Take Charge of Your Email
by K.J. McCorry
 The compelling feeling that you have to stop what you’re doing and read incoming e-mails as soon as they arrive can translate into a huge waste of time. If you let your e-mail take over your entire day, it will. Answering and writing e-mail needs to be just one of your many priorities.
When you open and glance at e-mails but don’t deal with the content immediately, you lose time by having to reread the messages and make decisions again. Designate blocks of time—ideally three or four times a day—for focusing on your e-mails. Like other important communication tasks, you should respond to an e-mail as soon as you read the message. When you can’t, most programs have utilities to “flag” messages as high priority or needing further action.
After opening an e-mail message:
1. Read the message entirely.
2. Respond to the e-mail (if needed).
3. Remove the message from your in-box by deleting or filing it.
After the three Rs, your in-box should only contain items you haven’t read or which require further action.
Once an e-mail has been read and acted upon, move any messages you want to save from the in-box to an e-mail folder. Be wary of creating too many folders. Ideally, you should not have to scroll down to see your e-mail folders. If you do, consider sub-filing under general categories. For example, create a folder called “Clients,” and then create sub-files beneath that header for specific clients by name.
To avoid a paper pileup, refrain from printing e-mails. If you need to keep a message, save it in the appropriate e-mail folder for future access. Filing within an e-mail system saves you from having to file paper versions of the e-mails you print.
Your ultimate—and amazingly achievable—goal is to create an empty in-box.
K.J. McCorry
K.J. McCorry is founder and president of Officiency, Inc. (officiency.com), a consulting firm specializing in office and computer organization systems. This article is adapted from her book, Organize Your Work Day in No Time (Que Publishing).
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