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| I'd like to offer a few tips in managing email.
1. Find a real-life role model who keeps a clean inbox.
I met someone three years ago. His name is Andy P. I was shocked to hear from him how he not only keeps a clean email inbox but also replies to all email in a prompt manner. I had been struggling with managing email for years and barely was keeping up with all the email coming into my email inbox. The lessons I learned from him were important (and I'll share some of them and more later), but the greater lesson was seeing someone in real-life who is managing and "overcoming" their email inbox. That was inspiration much needed, and it gave me the courage to see that it's possible. After that meeting three years ago, I've managed to keep a clean inbox with relative ease.
2. A clean inbox is a much-needed goal.
It's like having a clean desk or a clean mailbox. It's good to have a clean inbox and it's a worthwhile goal to have as well. What do I mean by a clean inbox? Basically I mean what it means, having email inbox at zero. For many people they don't even see that as a possibility or they have excuses, like "I'm not that organized. I could never have an email inbox at zero." But I think it has less to do our organizing skills and more to do with having a vision to go for it. For me I wanted a clean inbox for several years and I struggled and struggled to try to find a way to do it. Then, it happened. Breakthrough. Three years ago it all came together and I found that I could keep a clean email inbox without struggling and trying so hard. "How?" you ask. Well, let me explain more.
3. Lay down email boundaries.
Sometimes we're tempted to check email 100 times a day. That nonsense has got to stop. Email can be used against you. Much of email is people asking you to do things, like "tell me this" or "do this for me." If you don't have boundaries you will be answering everybody else's requests all day without getting the things you need to get done. You want to be in control of your email and not have your email control you. That's why you need to put in some healthy boundaries. I'm not going to tell you how many times to check your email everyday, but please don't check it 100 times. I usually check email 2nd hour I'm in the office. (The first two hours in the office I'm usually alone and it's before any meetings start.) The first hour I am praying, meditating, organizing my thoughts, writing my thoughts (The Artist Way book is a great tool for this), and getting direction for my day. It's my personal re-calibrating. The second hour I'm usually getting everything on my plate organized. I'm taking care of misc tasks and things laying around. I want a clean desk, clean computer desktop, and a clean email box. So, this 2nd hours is also when I check email. My goal is to get my email inbox to zero. So, I read through my email and get through each message one by one. By the end of my 2nd hour my email inbox is usually at zero. But it's not as easy as it sounds. It takes some extra lessons. Read on.
4. Create a sacred decision space.
There are certain emails that stump us. We don't feel like we can answer them right away. So, we usually keep them in our email inbox and decide to dwell on the content in our minds over the course of the next few days. But the few days pass and sometimes we're still not sure how to answer the email. Does this sound familiar? Then, sometimes these emails sit for weeks at a time, and add up guilt in our lives. Not good. So, what do we do? My solution to this problem has been to create a personal sacred space for decisions. I use the program, DevonThink, on my mac (you can use a different program or just a notepad of sorts). What I do is I move over difficult-to-answer emails from my email inbox over to DevonThink (the program has a quick import feature from my Apple Mail program). Then, I erase the email from my email inbox, and proceed to deal with this difficult email in this "sacred space." I call is a sacred space because in DevonThink I take the email and I start writing my personal thoughts about this email. Why is it difficult to answer? What are my feelings regarding this? And I also pray and ask God for His thoughts regarding it. I jot down everything on the same page of this email in DevonThink. Then, I make a decision. I sense a peace about the decision I just made, then I reply to the email (DevonThink allows me to reply to an email within the program). I don't think I could keep a clean email inbox without a personal sacred space for decisions. It's too stressful to look at a difficult email and be expected to reply on the spot without being given some space to think, vent, express, listen and decide. And often that process is too difficult to do in your head. You need to write it out, and you need some space to do it. I get through most of my difficult-to-answer email this way. And it works wonders. I no longer have email that piles up in my email inbox that I'm mulling over. I face those difficult emails quickly in my sacred space and don't let them become needless needles of guilt in my life. Another hint: if the difficult decision isn't time-urgent, then I usually let them sit in DevonThink for a couple days. And every Monday I am usually clearing out any decisions that I've been keeping in my DevonThink program.
5. Cut down on the amount of emails you send and receive.
I used to think that email was the greatest way to communicate. Now, I don't. Email is good for certain types of communications but has inherent flaws. First, email isn't real-time conversation. Compare email with instant messaging or even a phone call. With email you're saying something or asking a question and you don't get a response typically until a day or two later. That lag time can be frustrating and inefficient. Often, it's quicker, more efficient and clearer to have a real-time dialogue. Nowadays, I've been using sms text messaging a lot. My phone has a great sms text messaging client. In fact, it's amazingly simple and efficient. So, if I need to email someone, I'll ask myself if it'll be better to text message him or her. Often times it is, and I get an immediate answer. I try to use sms text messaging for those things I need an immediate answer with or time is an issue. Second flaw with email is that email is not a good FYI or archiving tool. I used to send lots of FYI emails to my staff team but realized that there's a better way. We now use a team wiki to post FYI messages. Then every week we have a time where we go through all of the FYI messages at once. It's quick and efficient. Further, we then archive the FYI on our wiki in an archive section so people can refer to them later if needed. The result is a huge cut-down on FYI emails internally and a much more efficient approach to sharing information. Third, email isn't the best decision-making tool either. I used to also ask for decisions via email to our staff team, but now I do this mostly through our team wiki. We all post decisions that need to be made on our wiki and we have a designated time each week to go over these decisions. The person posting the decision that needs to be made is responsible to post all the pertinent information needed for the team to make a decision together. This saves lots of time and also pulls together the major decisions our team needs to make into a set time. The result again is less email, and more efficient decision-making.
6. Use FAQs and email templates.
The 80/20 rule... 20 percent of you email takes up 80 percent of your time. This means that you probably receive tons of the same types of requests and your spending lots of your time answering the same kinds of email. The solution is to be creative. Find out what kinds of emails you're answering the most and how you're answering them. Then, try to automate it. Create a FAQ with all the information you give out in email and post it online. Refer people to that, and include the link in your email signature as well to anticipate email replies before they even happen. Also, archive some our your most typical email replies and make them into email templates. I am posting my most used email replies onto our team wiki and we're creating a library of email templates. The result is you're relying less on the medium of email to answer everybody's questions and referring them to a library of info on an online FAQ, or you're reducing the time you spend replying to emails by re-using old email replies as templates.
7. Know your limits. You're not digital superman.
Be careful how you reply to emails. Don't be a people pleaser and say yes to everything. This will negate all my previous advice on keeping a clean email inbox. You need to be realistic with how much you can do, and you need to learn to say no. For example, someone emails you and wants to meet you for lunch. But you don't think you have time to meet him. What do you say? Lots of people will say, "Ok, let's meet. When?" Rather than that, develop some polite ways to say no to people in email. For example, "I'd love to have lunch with you, but I'm extremely bogged down by things at work at the moment. Perhaps you can email me what you'd would like to talk about?" Or you can ask them to email you again in a few weeks to see if you can do lunch then. There are multitudes of ways to reply and say no politely. Try it. I'm a big believer that we need "space" our lives. Once we let ourselves become bogged down by everything and the demands of people, we're no longer living in freedom and joy. We need to preserve our time, energy and space and operate out of overflow (vs out-of-gas).
I hope some of these tips are helpful. I probably have lots of other things stored up in my brain on this topic, so if you have any questions or comments please reply.
On a closing note, the goal of having a clean email inbox is so that you won't be replying to email all day and let that run your life. Rather, you can use that energy for creative purposes. Create something. Write a poem or song. Paint a picture. Call a friend and hang out. Pursue love and the eternal things of life.
Dave
www.heydave.org | | |
| I've been listening to lots of nutrition stuff of late. Supposedly the 5 stages to behavior change are:
Pre-contemplation
Contemplation
Preparation
Action
Maintenance
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| lord, give me a fire for your name.
passion for your purposes.
a breaking heart for the city.
openness to the outcast.
let me see a world in need of you. | | |
| i'm leaving for my next mission trip in a couple days. yikes! time flies.
anyway, there's so much i'd like to share but can't here.
if you're near L.A., please come to our send-off on Monday 4/2 night at 8pm. we're going to be sharing a lot there.
email me for directions.
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