How to manage e-mail: 10 tips from the TED staff
Productivity / / December 23, 2019
TED Fellow Michael Makvoters a company blog, shared 10 tips with which he keeps order in the mail.
Who else but the editors and managers of the TED, to talk about methods of struggle with the overloaded mail. According to them, the company receive hundreds of emails every day, and counter incoming e-mails, some employees have long exceeded one thousand.
Michael Makvoters, UX-architect TED, offers 10 solutions to the problem.
In the future, you will have no more time than it is now
Michael noticed that many postpone work with e-mail for later, because they think that at some point in the future they will have more time to do so. Will not. Your employment rate probably will remain in the next week, month, year. You might even be happy about this. But the same amount of time will be for the post. So start working with it right now.
Try to start with a clean slate
Here are two ways to do this:
- Take some time and be engaged in cleaning the mail in several stages. Depending on how many messages you have, you need to ten calls to their clean up. If it is given hard, break the work into several 15-minute segments.
- Go for broke. Highlight three or four hours and make out of your folder "Inbox" ideal of cleanliness and order.
Set aside a little time each day
According to Michael, this is the hardest part of the plan. You have to work with e-mail several times each day. He advises to devote 15 minutes every four hours and deal only with the inbox folder.
If the letter is not very important - remove
It is tempting to send every little bit important letter to a folder, to deal with it later. But if the letter does not deserve your attention right now, delete it.
Unsubscribe from mailing each unnecessary
I often suffers from the fact that just removes the message from uninteresting to me mailings. Michael also received more categorically:
If the dispatch is not interested in you, not only to remove the letter but unsubscribe from it.
At the bottom of each letter there is a button "Unsubscribe" or Unsubscribe. Use it for its intended purpose. And the more, the better. You can also use the service Unroll.me, which we described here. He otpishet you from unwanted mailing lists automatically.
If the message is still in the "Inbox" folder, read it
If the letter has been tested, and you do not unsubscribe and delete it immediately, then read it. If it is short, read immediately. If long, send a letter to the pre-created folder "Read" and come back to it, when there will be more free time. Michael says that if you are honest with ourselves, the minimum percentage of all letters will fall into this folder.
Respond to short letters is better to
If you send an email requires a quick response, please respond... immediately. Do not wait. After sending the response, remove the letter. If the letter is a copy, sent to another recipient, and he does not need to know your answer, remove it from the recipients.
Redirect messages to colleagues, if they are able to respond more adequately
Redirect messages with little explanation, and delete it from your inbox.
Engage sorting
Any email service allows users to create folders. It is the best tool to deal with overloaded mail. I created a folder for work, photographs, studies and other things. Michael offers to do the folder "Projects", "Other", "answer later." The main thing is that you feel comfortable.
Select the right application
For me, this application has become Mailbox. Michael also chose it. But a lot of options. You can enter in the search for Layfhakeru word "mail" and the name of the operating system for which you are looking for a client. I promise you'll find something suitable.
Total
If you can not read the article (tell me why), here's a short list of all the steps:
- disassemble the "Inbox" folder for a number of approaches.
- Decide what to do with the letter, as soon as it comes.
- From time to time engaged in cleaning the mail.
- Unsubscribe from unwanted mailings.