How to manage your email

Enterprise Ireland - ebusinesslive.ie newsletter - Issue 204 26th February 2008
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Many workers now spend more time dealing with email than they do making phone calls, writing memos or even talking to colleagues or customers. Email is ubiquitous these days and is essential to the running of many businesses, but are you handling it as efficiently as possible?

A 2007 University of Glasgow study found that people working on a computer typically switched applications to check email between 30 and 40 times an hour, for anything from a few seconds to a minute. This came as a surprise, not least to the subjects themselves, half of whom had told the researchers they checked email only once an hour.

According to Dr Karen Renaud, who compiled the Glasgow research, the act of repeatedly interrupting tasks to check email broke workers' concentration levels and reduced their productivity. A growing level of 'email anxiety' was also discovered, with 34 percent of respondents stressed out by the volume of emails received daily, and 28 percent regarding email as a major source of pressure.

As well as being stressful and distracting, time spent checking email can also cost your business money. A 2007 survey by Waterford Technologies estimated that the average worker spends approximately 11 working weeks a year negotiating their email - a significant strain on any firm's resources.

How often should I check email?

This question is about as easy to answer as the famous 'how long is a piece of string?' poser. Customer-facing staff, such as sales or support teams, may spend their whole day checking and responding to email. However, for other staff members it can help to have a small number of set times in the day when they put aside the rest of their work to go through and empty their inbox.



But just as email can be a disruption to the rest of your daily tasks, daily tasks can also threaten to interrupt email management. Many email messages require a decision. Good decisions require focus, and focus requires uninterrupted attention. So, when you do sit down to work through your incoming email, dedicate yourself to that task alone. Some people even go as far as writing 'email' into their diaries and keeping these times sacred. Others are more flexible, but during this time don't answer the phone or allow interruptions: work only on processing your inbox.

This system can also help cut down on spurious email from colleagues, where something that could be cleared up in a 30 second phone-call may take four or five back-and-forth emails to confirm. For example, one person sends an email saying "let's do lunch". The recipient replies asking where and when. A third person is cc'ed to see if they want to go, and an extended flurry of email correspondence ensues. However, if colleagues know you are not always available via email, they are more likely to pick up the phone in instances like this, and the lunch date can be swiftly sorted without undue interruption to the work flow.

Which email should I answer first?

Staff should resist the temptation to move straight to the most interesting looking email. Jumping around through your inbox can lead to emails getting lost or mislaid. Begin by processing the first message and only move to the second one after this has been dealt with.

It can be difficult to determine whether to reply immediately or not to an email. The 'GTD (get things done) two-minute rule' is a rule of thumb coined by American business writer David Allan. It says that if you cannot fully answer the email in two minutes or less, it should be filed for later consideration.

The Four Ds

Sally McGhee, a US business consultant, has incorporated the GTD rule into her 'Four Ds' system, which many people find useful. The Four Ds refer to four different actions you can take with each email.

1. Delete it

Many emails are not that important. Maybe you have been BCC'ed on an email that is not your concern, or you are being informed that today is Sally from accounts' birthday. Once you have read these emails, they can be deleted. (However, more and more companies are now asking staff to be wary of deleting messages, for legal and compliance reasons. It is advisable to put guidelines in place so all staff know which emails must not be deleted. See Issue 166 and 167 for more on internet and email usage policies for staff.)

2. Do it

Many emails simply require a quick yes or no decision, a short phone call to confirm something, or a quick search for the information requested. Doing these short tasks immediately is much more efficient than filing the message and having to come back to it later.

3. Delegate it

If the email references something you are not directly responsible for, or if it requests information that only a colleague has access to, then the message should be quickly forwarded on and then, in many cases, deleted.

4. Defer it

If a message cannot be deleted, done, or delegated in two minutes, then it should be deferred. McGhee suggests that only about 10 percent of business email messages should be deferred. Most email packages now include easy-to-use management features, which allow people to store their email in different folders and get at messages again easily as required. You might also make use of an email task manager to help organise action items.

Following these simple rules should help workers to waste less time on their email, and alleviate much of the stress that comes from worrying about an overloaded inbox.