How to Eliminate Work Email Overload
We get a lot of junk mail from a lot of places, but we forget that a lot of our work-related email can be junk as well. Apparently, those of us using email for work sent and received 110 emails per day in 2012. Here are a few tips for eliminating some of that junk to avoid work email overload without sacrificing communication or project management.
Get Out of CC Land
Sometimes we get a lot of emails simply because we choose to Cc people that don’t need to be involved. Then you’ve got your boss responding to every little thing when it isn’t necessary. If you have to keep your boss in the loop, avoid using Cc and instead share the task details via an organization app, like Flow. This way he or she can find any information related to the task, but won’t fill up your inbox with responses to those Cc’d emails. And if you’re getting Cc’d on far too many emails yourself, just sort them out of the way using your provider’s filtering system. You can make it so only emails sent directly to you make it to your inbox.
Handle Emails Immediately
One of the problems with reading email on a mobile device is the tendency to forget to respond because you’re bogged down with other tasks. This is a bad habit, and leaves uncompleted tasks lingering around in your work inbox. Instead, when you read an email, immediately respond, delete, archive, or label and mark unread. You can organize your tasks much more quickly this way, and respond when the time is right.
Reduce Incoming Notifications
You might want to know what’s going on with your social media accounts, but do you need a notification every time a post is repined? Probably not. Turn OFF the majority of your social media notifications. You can filter them to be sorted and marked as read, but are you really going to go back and check them out? Unless you know you’ll need them, just turn the notifications off completely to keep them out of cyberspace altogether.
Organize Project Management
Sometimes email isn’t actually the problem – it’s the communication in your office or the organization of projects that’s the real issue. It’s important to recognize that email as a whole is a good thing, but that abusing this tool is what causes anxiety and overload. Utilize organization apps like Flow to keep everything for specific projects in one place, and tag people in comments and tasks that need to be in the loop. It’s not necessary for an entire department to know all the problems and details of a project at all times so keep each other posted only when necessary. Tell your collaborators to communicate with you via phone or chat if something needs to be answered immediately, or to compile a list of questions and tasks to send to you rather than shooting off 50 one-line emails a day.
Answer When Necessary
Avoid shooting off those quick Reply-All emails with “okay” or “thanks” unless the email requires confirmation. Does everyone need to know that you received the email? Good habits spring good habits and hopefully your coworkers will follow your lead. Imagine how many fewer emails you’d get just in the course of a single day! Try to collaborate project management and organization outside of email and say “thanks” face-to-face next time you see the person.
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