This week’s feature article is based on a portion of the OneCoach Expert Interview with Laura Stack, author of “Leave the Office Earlier.”
How many items are on your to-do list? And how many of those will you actually cross off today?
Time management and planning are foundational to personal productivity, yet many people don’t approach each day with a plan, and as a result end up wasting valuable time in a reactive mode. Others at least have a to-do list, but typically attack the easy items first, which means the important items don’t get done very fast!
Of course, one of the big enemies of personal productivity today is e-mail. The constant flow of e-mail alerts during the day can destroy your concentration and cause you to flit from one project or crisis to the next. But you do not have to work in this state of e-mail-induced ADD.
Let’s face it, most e-mails are not that important. And almost none require you to drop everything. Set the expectation that you will respond within 24 hours, then live up to that standard. You can do this by setting a time to look at your e-mail twice a day, say every four hours. But first you have to break the e-mail addiction, and the key to that is to turn off all the alerts.
If you’re using Outlook, go into your Tools, go to Options, E-mail Options and then Advanced E-mail Options. Where it says “When new items arrive in my Inbox” you’ll find four boxes that are checked. This is the default that Microsoft sets, but do you really need all those bells and whistles every time an e-mail arrives? Be fearless and uncheck all four. Your e-mail will still flow in as always, but it won’t be demanding your instant attention.
The next step is to be disciplined about looking at your e-mail for a half hour or so twice a day, and ruthlessly applying the six Ds of e-mail management:
Discard it. This one’s easy. Make a snap decision and hit the delete key.
Delegate it. Can someone else handle it? Does it belong to another department? Forward it with a quick note, and then move it to a personal folder (see below for more on personal folders).
Do it. If you can handle it in three minutes, do it and be done with it. You won’t have to come back and mentally process it again, which is a victory.
Date it. This is for e-mails that you need to reply to, but can’t right now. Many people get stuck here, but there’s a simple remedy if you know your software. In Outlook, for instance, you can automatically convert an e-mail to a to-do item. There’s a “Move to Folder” button. It sits up by the printer key and the X key and it looks like a piece of paper going into a folder. So you click “Move to Folder,” then “Task,” you put in a start date, save and close. It takes it right out of your inbox, and puts it into your tasks, and it appears on your calendar on the day you want to handle that. So your task pad becomes a mini to-do list.
Drawer. For personal e-mails or things that don’t require any action but you don’t want to delete, use the same “Move to Folder” technique and simply move the message out of your in-box and over to another folder.
Deter. This is for the stuff that makes you ask “Why am I getting this?” So take the step of adding the sender to your blocked senders list, or unsubscribe, or set up a rule that says anytime something comes from this address, it’s going into the trash or some specific folder.
There you have it – a simple system for defeating the tyranny of e-mail and taking back your personal productivity. Try it, you’ll be surprised at how much more focused you will be, and how much more you’ll get done.
