You are using your email wrong! - It's time to learn a better way

Constantly full email box is one of the curses of the modern day. Messages arrive in multiples, and soon you have more of them than you can possibly go through with. And almost always, you miss something worthwhile. We have arrived at a situation, in which email is almost always misused. Here’s a collected list of how to improve and optimize your daily use of email.

Clean your mailbox
Unread messages will bother you in the back of your brains even though you keep on telling yourself otherwise. A new, better way of using your mails is good to begin by clearing out all the trash in the box. Go through it all and get going with the new way of working.

So, move all the old emails to a separate folder, where they won’t keep on multiplying. Go through one-month worth of old mails within each working day – this should take about 10mins each day. Start with the oldest ones as most of these are unworthy. Even with messages from one and half years ago, you would ideally only need 18 days to clear it all out.

Do not email when urgent
Originally email was created to replace a fax machine, traditional letters and phones. Despite this fact, many people keep on mailing even if they could simply just call. It is good to remember that email was not created as a conversation tool since the matters in hand move on rather slowly via email and one can’t affect much the speed of the process him or herself.

A phone call also works better when it comes to motivating people, since when agreed over the phone many matter do not keep on hanging around for very long – the get done. One interesting thing to notice as well is the fact how emails, and text messages, can give the recipient a false impression of the mood of the sender and thus, cause many misunderstandings like in the cases when the other person expects their boss to mad for some reason. In the end this often proves out to be just the matter of formatting the text right.

Do when urgent, and the delete!

Make sure your mails are written in a suitable form
In the headline, write “assignment suggestion” and after a colon a short description of the content. If the message does not ask anybody to do anything particular or specific you can mark it with “for your information”. For example, mails like “Answer back if you can attend: The Xmas party planning committee gathering on Tuesday” will get people to react better and actually even read the mail altogether. Badly titled emails will often be fully ignored.

Delete when unimportant!

Think how and when you look at your mail
Email is a good servant but really bad master. It will take control if you do not plan the use of it too well. Create a habit for yourself and really think how many times you come back to go through your mails. Multi-tasking has been already proven to be inefficient method of working, so do not let the email disturb you when you got something better to do. In this way it work very much like Facebook or Twitter…or Instagram.

React to email on the first time around
Email programs will offer you ways of automatizing and methods of marking or tagging the mail to be marked as important and to be dealt with later. They are all ways of pushing things forward and avoiding responsibility. The most efficient way is to grab each mail only once and at the time. You can fulfil the asked commitments in the mail immediately, or simply delete it on the spot. Everything in between will automatically make your work less efficient as you keep coming back to the same issue later on in the day or week.

To do: when the message contains bigger and more important info and tasks, move the stuff into the cloud or your local memory and then delete actual email!

Forget the excitement of a new message
Many will be drawn into the lure of any new messages. It is fascinating indeed when you hear the ‘bling’ sound ringing or the screen will have a cool pop-up window offering you the latest of the world – you simply have to go and check it out. You will detox yourself from this behaviour by inactivating all notifications that keep you distracted from the obvious, and by checking the mail only when you have initially intended. Remember, you are the master of all of this – you control how you are being interrupted.

Delete the junk, now
The inbox folder full of fresh email tends to have a significantly small amount of really important messages. Despite this, the exact emails with less importance keep on filling the space and our screens. If you want save time and brain capacity, delete the junk immediately. The importance of this activity is highlighted especially when you run out of space and the new stuff do not keep on coming in. Or your Windows keeps on yelling you to react to the small capacity available.

Agree upon, and teach a new way of working
What’s more important than sharing the good stuff, right? Now that we have learned a new and more efficient or even convenient way of dealing with email we should teach the same skills to others around. Also, if do want to keep on being more efficient, we have to make sure others understand how we wish to be reached when there are business matters on hand. The easiest way is to take the whole company, unit or a group of co-workers together and go through it all at once.

Markkamies is a freetime writer moving between Scandinavia and Spain while writing about things and life, well mostly mine.