Christa Wagner

The average employee gets far more email than he or she can cope with, and an increasing number of people suffer from “email overload.” People are even declaring email bankruptcy and deleting all their email at once, but that doesn’t really solve the problem since more emails just keep pouring in.

Think about this…… Let’s assume you get 50 emails each day. On average, it takes about four minutes typing up a response to each one. That’s over three hours each day dedicated to email alone. Now, let’s factor that number into five days a week multiplied by 48 work weeks a year; that’s 800 hours spent on only email. That’s almost 20 weeks dedicated completely to email! Do you see what I’m getting at? Email is a serious contributing factor to a business’s lack of productivity.

In a world of information overload where email has created the never ending workday, it’s time we start using this tool more effectively. Here are two tips you can start implementing sooner than later. 

1. Avoid opening email first thing in the morning: This may send shivers up your spine, and I am not suggesting waiting until noon, but by postponing your email, you can dedicate this high-energy morning time to a task that adds value to your day and brings you closer to your goals.
2. Process Email At Specific Times: Process your email in short doses, perhaps twice daily or for a few minutes each hour. Now I know this will be a challenge and requires a habit change, but email creates a reactionary work environment and you can greatly increase your effectiveness if you set aside specific email time frames. Additionally, when you don’t respond immediately, it sets the precedent that you are not sitting at your desk waiting to deal with someone’s email.

Since many of us have never had email training, and since we have not set up email rules and boundaries, the benefits quickly spin out of control.   Manage yourself and you can reduce time spent on email.

To schedule an email management workshop call us at 778.839.5792 or visit our website for more details.

Title: Avoid Email Bankruptcy

When: Oct 13, 2009 06:30 PM

Investment:$22

Yesterday, I gave a workshop called Simplify Your Life and Kick Start Productivity for the staff of Langara College.  It was fantastic and I was honored to be selected as a speaker for their continuing education courses for their staff. 

At the workshop, I shared Five Organizing Tactics to implement to start living a more organized life.  One of them was “Manage Your Email” and the topic turned into a really healthy conversation about email overuse. 

Nearly every attendee was complaining about how much email they had; they said it wasted their time and bogged them down from getting the more important tasks accomplished.  This is all true, which is why we must learn to manage our email to more effectively.

A question that came up was what to do with all the “Thank You” emails you receive.  You know the situation, it happens many times each day, when you send something to someone and they respond just to say “Thank You.”   Or even worse, when you send a group email (which should be avoided at all costs) and everyone responds to say “Thank You.”  These are very common after an event of some kind, like a holiday party.  Everyone agreed the emails were polite, but completely unnecessary and just adds to their already full inbox. 

I shared with them two tools you can use to reduce the amount of “Thank You” emails you receive.  Of course, this may take some training and you will want to let your recipients know how these tools work so you all can use them properly. 

• NRN = No Response Necessary:  Place these words or this acronym at the bottom of your email, near your name or closing.  It implies, the person only has to read the email, but does not have to respond. 
• NTN = No Thanks Necessary:  Place these words or this acronym at the bottom of your email, near your name or closing.  It lets the recipient know you do not expect a return or thank you email. 

Email has the potential to be a great tool, but with its overuse and abuse, its more of an annoyance than anything else.  We need to train each other how to use email effectively so we can start to use this tool in a more productive manner.

If you would like more information on Email Management contact Vancouver Professional Organizer, Christa Wagner, or and to listen and how to manage you inbox purchase an A Red Bench Teleclass called Detox Your Inbox.

Make Life a little easier and organize your electronic files

Minimize this blog and take a look at your computer desktop.  What does it look like?  Are there are icons covering it?  Look at your “My Documents” folder?  What does it look like?  Are there random icons and folders in your documents?  If you answered yes, then keep reading.  

Information is only valuable is you can find it and although it is easier to find an electronic file than a paper file, the more organized the system the better.  I have an entire workshop on this topic, but in a nut shell and to get you started, here is a great suggestion.  Look at your documents again?  What do you see?   Here is an example of what I typically see: 

• Miscellaneous (my personal fave)
• Bank of America
• Receipts
• Cover Letters
• Ideas
• Client A
• Client B
• Client C
• Fluffy
• Transcripts
• McDonald’s Corporation
• Fax
• Goals
• Reference letter
• Certificate scans

And the list goes on and on and on.  This is a good list, but its difficult to find exactly what you’re looking quickly.  Let’s start over by naming the folders in your documents with a broad, generic name.  Then move relevant documents or sub-folders into that broad folder.  You can always get more specific later if needed.  Here is an example based on the list above:

• Finance:  For Bank of America Statement, Receipts, etc.
• Career:  For cover letters, reference letters, McDonald’’s Corp, etc.  Be sure to name these so you can find them easily.  For example Cover Letter_Fahlgren_Account Supervisor.
• Resources:  For Ideas and other things you reference from time to time.
• Education:  For transcript and certificate scans.
• Personal:  For goals
• Communication:  Fax
• Clients:  For clients A, B and C

The idea is to have less folders so you can find things more easily.  Instead of looking through and entire list for a clients file, place them all in one location called Clients.  Simple and easy and I would recommend no more than 8 – 10 folders.  Oh and you may have noticed the miscellaneous folder went away.  Move these contents into their appropriate location based on your new system.

Computer and email organizing has become a bit of a focus for me.  For other blog posts on email related topics, read One Step To Reducing Email Overload, Take Control Of Your Email Inbox, Reduce the Volume Of Email You Receive and Detox Your Inbox.   Consider hiring Savvy Solutions to help you or your employees Avoid Email Bankruptcy.

A Red Bench Owners, Christa and Angela

We recently had fantastic A Red Bench teleclass called Detox Your Inboxand it was about using email effectively.  One of the questions was whether our expert, fellow organizer Lauren Halagarda, recommends using email folders for archiving. Now with all of our teleclasses you have to take the expert’s advise as just that – advice.  You can take it or leave it, but do give it some thought.  You have to listen to the teleclass to understand the entire context of her recommendation, but interestingly enough Lauren does not recommend archiving your emails using folders. 

She says “saving email is only helpful if you can find the email and the folders become overwhelming and confusing.”  Lauren recommends after processing your email, and she provides a process to do so on the teleclass, to archive emails in one folder.  Then use search software to retrieve information quickly.  She reviewed various search software tools on the call including her preferred software recommendation.   

Now, I know for many of you this may be a big change and seem like and odd recommendation.  I know for myself, I do like having a personal folder, a folder for my organizing company and one for A Red Bench.  I can still use the search tool she recommends making retrieval easy. But as I was listening to her I started thinking about a client who is an attorney and has to save every client communication.  Having one folder will help her tremendously because right now she cannot stay on top of archiving them and the volume does not allow her to find anything.  Moving the emails into one folder and then using a search tool to find what she needs,when and if she needs it.  This is a perfect solution for her; it’s simple and something she can maintain long term. 

To purchase Detox Your Inbox, visit the Audio Recordingspage of our website and consider some of our other organizing related teleclasses called Time Management is Broken or Organizing For Your Brain Type.

In a recent blog post called 10 Worst Work Habits, we learned one of the top ten worst work habits is being a sloppy emailer.  As a follow-up, I wanted to share what I think that means and how you can avoid it.   Email is not something we were taught how to do, it just entered our world and we started using it.  Now we use it every single day and abuse it in many cases. 

In my opinion sloppy emailing is more than sloppy grammar.  If you are texting with a close friend, or even emailing a close friend, sure you can skip the grammar check.  But if you are in the work environment, be sure to spell and grammar check prior to sending.   I think that goes without saying so I am not going to even bother including that in my email rules to avoid sloppy emailing:

Use Descriptive Subject Line:  Your subject line can tell your reader how important the email is and the the context of the email. 

• Be clear and concise
• Be to the point
• Be descriptive
• Be informative
• Be specific
• Foreshadow the content to follow
• Avoid clever or cute headings

A great subject line is “Action:  Please submit your marketing plan to be my 5pm 5/15.

Skip The Long Paragraph Of Text:  I don’t know about you, but if an email is over a few lines I stop reading and therefore I am missing a lot of information.  Instead of a lot of text use short bullet points and indicate where actions are necessary with bold words like “Your action required.”

Limit Use Of Reply All:  I personally just wish this button would go away altogether, but since that is not likely we have to work together on this.  Before you hit that reply all button ask yourself if everyone really needs to know your thoughts, ideas or opinons.  For every email we send, we receive three in return.  If you send off an email to 20 people, think about how many emails that is in your inbox.   If you do have to send an email to a group, blind copy (BCC) everyone so reply all is not an option, or consider including verbiage: To save time, please reply only to me rather than hitting “Reply All.”

Use Email Lingo:   Again, no one has taught us to use email; we are doing the best we can.  Like I said at a seminar last week, we need to learn to manage email because right now its managing us.   Consider using email lingo like ‘No Reply Needed’ – added this to subject line – shorten to NRN
‘No Thanks Needed’ – same as above (NTN).   Using this lingo let’s people know you do not expect a response and will have less in your inbox. 

Come on, email can be a great tool but we have to learn to use it effectively.  Don’t be a sloppy emailer; use my suggestions and spend less time in front of that computer screen.

Email abuse has become a bit of a focus for me.  For other blog posts on email related topics, read One Step To Reducing Email Overload, Take Control Of Your Email Inbox, Reduce the Volume Of Email You Receive and Detox Your Inbox.   Consider hiring Savvy Solutions to help you or your employees Avoid Email Bankruptcy.

If you know me, or have read other email related posts, then you know I am not a huge fan of email.  Now, before you freak out of course I understand the benefits of email and do enjoy communicating using email on certain occasions.  My problem with email is that you would never call me 10 different times, but you wouldn’t think twice about emailing me 10 times.  As I reviewed my email, much of the email I receive had no benefits to my life or business whatsoever.  Its information, its anFYI, or even more fun, a series of Reply All’s from various group I belong to.  (My personal favorite waste of time.) 

So I have been conducting a little experiment.  In an effort to reduce the amount of emails in my inbox, I have been trying to reduce the amount of emails I send.   I read somewhere for every one email you send, you receive three back.  And if you receive 100 emails each day and each takes 3 minutes to deal with, that’s five hours of your day.  No wonder you can’t get anything done!   So I send much less and am very aware of who I am sending to.  I only respond if I must and delete aggressively.  My goal by the end of the day in Zero Inbox, but usually I have around 10.   

What I can tell you is it has be fantastic not to have that panic feeling of all the emails I have to read and deal with in my inbox.   Just like everything else, you have to pick and choose; I choose to only respond to the most necessary, important emails.  Give it a try and increase your productivity greatly by reducing the amount of incoming emails you receive.

Of course, email came up at my workshop the other night.  It always does as one of the largest time busters in our days.  One woman even said she didn’t realize how much time to she was dedicating to email until she really thought about it, but she also couldn’t figure out where her day had gone.  I feel we, as individuals, have to set the precedent and start using email more effectively. 

All situations are unique so you know how important email is to you and your life.  But be honest; my workshop was to a group of women I asked them to think about if email was REALLY bringing in new business and revenue. 

Here are some tips shared at Monday’s workshop:

• Reduce email use by checking email two or three times per day.  An interruption is anything that prevents the start to finish completion of a task.  Email can be an enormous time waster, and does not allow you to complete a task interruption free. 
• Avoid opening email until your top priority is completed. 
• Turn off the alert of new email.
• Use rules to manage and prioritize emails as well as delete junk. 
• Use an auto reply letting people know your email schedule and how they can reach you if urgent.

Email is something we all have to take charge of; it’s a great tool, but we have to stop abusing it.  Reduce your time with email and start seeing results in your day. For additional emails tips see our posts, Detox Your Inbox and Eliminate Email Overload.

What a great appointment I had today.  I was working with a client who was experiencing email overload.  Who isn’t really?  She is an executive, has a lot on her plate and had too many emails in her inbox.  Although email is certainly known to decrease productivity, if used effectively it can help you stay organized.  My client was using her inbox as her to do list, which unfortunately doesn’t work when you have pages and pages of emails.   We worked for four hours today and she is now going to focus on implementing some new habits to eliminate email overload.  Here were some steps:

1. We started deleting.  When she called me there were over 4,800 emails in her inbox and by the time I arrived today, since our consultation, she had reduced her inbox to 2,200.  Great work!  She eliminated anything she did not need, would not refer to and moved any reference materials into folders. 
2. We created a folder system:  You have to ask yourself if you are truly going to reference this information again and if so file it just as you would a vital paper document.  Create a folder system that is intuitive and easy to you.  My favorite folder titles are Administrative, Client, Communications, Writing and Resources. 
3. We moved meeting and event emails onto her calendar so she can delete the email and see her entire day on her calendar.
4. We utilized her tasks list and moved TO DO email to tasks.  
5. We talked about composing more effective emails and sending less to receive less. 

Email can be a great tool if used effectively.  Take some to use each tool appropriately and see if you can reduce your time with email and get some real work done.