I’ll never forget the first time I was exposed to e-mail. I was a Junior in high school participating in a typewriting class. I was playing on the computer and clicked on an icon I had never seen before. “What’s this?” I asked my teacher. “Oh, that’s electronic mail…it’s a new thing, but no one uses it much”.
A few years later, I finally figured out how to send and receive e-mail messages. I remember feeling almost giddy as I would hear the man say, “you’ve got mail”. “Yippie…I love mail!” I couldn’t wait for the next message from my friends. “This is the coolest thing…ever!”
Twenty years later, (and after five years of running a home-based business) I often want to strangle the “you’ve got mail’- man. “I’m too busy to check my mail right now”. “Thank you, but I don’t want to participate in a ‘hug-war’”. “The dancing hamster is cute, but I am trying to work, darnit.” “Thanks, but no thanks for the ‘virtual’ flowers.” “Arghh…..!”
Set aside blocks of time to check your e-mail, and turn off automatic notification.
Create separate accounts for your business, and “fun” messages. While this might seem like a “no-brainer” to most of you, it took me a year of filtering out my dad’s goofy joke messages from business mail that I had to respond to. Now, I read all of the “silly-stuff” when I am watching television (or when I am bored) and I read my business account mail when I am working.
You are probably wondering why I have such a love-hate relationship with automatic mail notification tools. While they are fine when you are simply goofing around and checking personal mail, they can be a tremendous distraction when you are actually working. Personally, there is nothing worse than being in mid-thought as I am typing out a blog only to hear, a n obnoxious “ding-dong”. I was tired of the ‘you’ve got mail’ guy, so I picked a “doorbell” instead.
Create e-mail folders and sort through your messages.
I use Microsoft Outlook and love that I have the ability to drag and drop my messages into folders. I’ve simply created two folders. One is for “urgent” messages that I need to respond to within 24 hours, and the other is for “non-urgent” mail that I want to review in my free time. Emily Price, our technology blogger, also has some great tips for using Outlook to organize your mail.
If you work with a large number of people, encourage them to put their name in the subject line.
Lisa, the Community Manager at Families.com asks us to write our name and blog topic in the subject line when we are writing to her. This expectation is included right in our blogger handbook that we receive when we join Families.com as a blogger. This was one of those ideas I wish I would have thought of myself long ago.
I used to work with over one-hundred team members as a direct sales Director. While I would like to say that I knew every detail about each of them I would often be half-way through a page long e-mail before I figured out who I was even talking with. This wasted my time, and theirs.
Do you have any suggestions for managing your e-mail? Tell us your tips in the comments section.
In the meantime, enjoy my related “multi-tasking” post.