Convert Emails to Tasks to Prevent Aimless Work

Nov 30, 2017

There is something that is almost as bad as goofing off at work, and it’s called Aimless Work. That’s when you work on whatever is in front of you at the moment instead of prioritizing your work. People who do this feel busy, and may even get a sense of purpose or importance. But in reality if you do this you are working aimlessly and not achieving much. These days there is way too much to do at work to allow this practice and you need to fix it.

Email Is Prime Example

Reading and acting on email endlessly is a prime example of this. When we read and act on most email as we get it, we are contributing to aimless work. Face it: we all get way too much email, so we can’t treat it equally. We can’t read it all, and we cannot act on it all. We can’t just work on it all as it comes in. If we do, we’ll bog down in email and never get to our important work.

Convert to Tasks

The core solution I’ve been teaching for years is this: when you see an email that seems to need action, unless it’s really urgent (or super quick to do), take a second and convert it to a task and immediately move on. Do this rather than acting on it in the moment. That way you don’t get trapped doing low priority work all day just because it’s in front of you.

Then Work Tasks in Priority Order

After a session of processing mail and converting and prioritizing tasks (using 1MTD or MYN principles), next jump to your task list and work your tasks in priority order. This might include actions in mail you got today, but it more likely means working first on commitments you added to your list earlier. Imagine, doing your most important work first instead of just reading and doing new email all day, what a concept!

Also, once you process that mail, get it out of the Inbox (also using 1MTD or MYN principles) so the Inbox is relatively clear and ready for a new set of decisions.

How to convert emails to tasks in Windows desktop Outlook is simple, just drag the email to the Tasks icon. More details and other methods are shown in all my books and video lessons.

So, again, help prevent aimless work and start converting emails to tasks!

Michael