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Hello my name is Donovan, and I have an email problem!
September 25, 2007 | Filed Under computing
A blog over at EuroCom referencing a series of articles called Inbox Zero: action based email by Merlin Mann prompted me to write a blog about email that has been on my mind for ages. If you talk to a lot of people, including YWAM leaders, email has become a blessing and curse. People seem to be buried under it and sit at their desks for hours battling it.
For many, it has become a huge work related pressure. It has gotten so bad, it is almost like we need to have support groups for people. Imagine an evening of getting together, you start out by saying your name and admitting you have an email problem. Sound funny? I talk to people who are almost desperate enough to do anything, including just that!
Well, that used to be the case for me, but not any more. I have had a clean email inbox for nine months. I used to have hundreds of emails in my inbox and since the first of the year, I have cleared my inbox pretty much every day. At the time of writing this blog, I have zero messages in my inbox literally.
How do I do it? How did I get set free? The article above by Merlin Mann references some things I have learned through trial and error. I also picked up some things useful tips from a book called Never Check Your Email In The Morning. So to hopefully save you some pain and travail, here is my 10 step programme!
- Don’t clear your email first thing in the morning: Instead focus for the first few hours on setting your strategic priorities of the day. Then later in the day, book some time to clear your email. I like to do mine somewhere between 10:00-11:00 a.m. Sometimes, I will book another slot towards the end of the day to clear my email again.
- Switch off your automatic checker: The challenge I found with being on-line all the time is that email that pops up on my screen distracts me and I wind up spending the afternoon on something that I never planned to work on. I also sometimes think “this will only take a minute” and before I know it, my day is gone and my strategic priorities have flown out the window.
- Have a “clear your email inbox mentality”: My goal when I sit down to do my email is to clear my inbox. I do not use my inbox as a holding place for pending items awaiting action, otherwise what is important starts to get mixed up with unnecessary items and I get distracted in the torrents of email.
- Be brutal: The problem with email is that it usually costs the same whether you send 1 or 100, so you get copied on tonnes of things. My first question when I look at an email is whether or not I really need to read or respond to this. If it isn’t something core to what I do I will just scan it to get the general gist of the message. Better yet, if it isn’t important, I just delete it away without feeling guilty.
- Open email only once: The goal is to open up an email, run through a series of mental questions about whether you should read it or even respond to it, action it, then delete it. Don’t close an email until you have actioned it in some way or another. I get very concerned when I realise that I have opened the same email message repeatedly.
- Book time for emails that require more than a few minutes: (this is probably the most important tip of all!) If a lengthy response is needed and I cannot type a response within three minutes, then it is beyond the scope of clearing my inbox and is something that I need to book specific time for. Emails in this category become like little projects or work tasks and need to be managed accordingly. In my case, I file them in the “For Followup” folder in Outlook. Emails that go in here are tagged green, orange and red. Green is low priority and would often have papers or articles that I can read in my leisure. Orange is stuff of normal priority that I need to get to, but it’s not urgent. Red is urgent priority and needs me to book time to deal with it quickly. As this folder is all important stuff, I rarely let it get above 30 items.
- Consider not using email at all! The reality is that some of the emails that require more than three minutes of your time, probably shouldn’t be handled by email at all. I have taken to using more frequently the telephone, Skype video conference and face to face meetings for emails that are complicated and would require a lot of time writing a response on. The reality is that if it is complicated, there is a good chance you will be misunderstood anyway. It also goes without mention that more than likely the person on the other end will have to spend an equal amount of time writing a complicated response to your complicated response. Then you respond with another complicated response… on and on the hours go by…
- Don’t spend a lot of time filing in folders: Unless it is something very important, when I am done with an email it goes into a folder called “Read and Completed” and I do not maintain tonnes of other email folders to file emails in. Only the most important items such as maybe an electronic receipt, critical details, etc. go into a handful of other folders. The reason I do this is that I rely on Windows Desktop Search or Google Desktop Search to find emails. Desktop search engines are so powerful now, they do a much better job of finding an email than I could ever think of by using folders.
- Use email rules/filters for email forums: For email forum traffic, I set up a rule to file anything from that forum into a sub folder. That way I can efficiently read the forum traffic without having it all get clogged up into my inbox. If you are a techie, some of these things can be monitored using RSS. I have this set up for my facebook alerts and our base intranet.
- Get a decent email programme: Outlook 2003 and even better Outlook 2007 have improved the way you can manage email. If you are using an old client, upgrade. It does make a difference. There are also other great programmes out there like Nelson Mail Organiser which people swear by. I mention software last in my steps because if you don’t employ practices similar to what I have written above, software will not help you one bit. There is no “silver bullet” to this problem.
I was told by a friend that World Vision was discouraging people from using email for more than anything other than distributing information and announcements. Anything substantial, they were asking people to pick up the phone or go find them face to face. It was reported to me that they were asking people to do this because they saw efficiency go down from people sitting ten feet apart in the same office sending emails to each other.
Email is indeed a powerful tool, but if not used well, it can actually cause you to do less. Besides, when you get on overload and don’t answer your emails at all, we might as well go back to the days before there was technology!
P.S. - it was a total coincidence that my tips turned out to be ten, so I could call it my ten step programme. Maybe I need to run some email freedom weekends which teach all of these in retreat like setting! hmmmm…. 
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12 Responses to “Hello my name is Donovan, and I have an email problem!”
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Donovan - excellent suggestions and really nice to see them all in one place.
I have one extra step which is ‘invest in a good anti-spam program’.
I am a geek for freeware, but the only software solution I have paid for recently is a good antispam solution. The free ones are just not up to the job. There are loads out there and YWAMKB has a section on it - or you could share what you use
Cheers - Mark
I use Spam Assassin. I have this as part of my hosting package with my two domains - donovanpalmer.com and http://www.the-palmers.org I also have it installed on my Linux box as well. http://www.dmpnet.org
The reason I like Spam Assassin is that it is very, very accurate. I also don’t even want to download spam at all. So what I do is periodically go onto my domains or linux box with a webmail programme and delete it all. I rarely get a false positive with Spam Assassin, so I don’t even feel like I need to clear the spam away very often. (I often only clear the spam once a month)
Spam Assassin is free and is constantly downloading updates.
Hi,
I recently read this and it kind of hit hard. It is from the CEO of Nelson Publishing who writes some great entries on his blog in regards to Email etc.
P.
http://www.michaelhyatt.com/fromwhereisit/2007/06/e-mail-escape-f.html
Dear Donavon,
Glad to hear there is someone else who has turned off the automatic email checking too!
These principles are GREAT. Could you put them on the KB please?
Kevin
These are some good tips.
It’s unfortunate what you said about having to be a techie to use RSS. I think this is something that everybody (techie or non-techie alike) could benefit from greatly.
About spam, I use an “invisible” gmail account that I route everything through. I then check that e-mail account but still use my “visible” account to send e-mails out.
It can get a little confusing at times, especially considering that you can configure Apple Mail to not automatically check a certain account (i.e., your “visible” account which should be forwarding everything to the “invisible” account. You don’t want to check this one because then you might accidentally get those e-amils before they have been routed through the gmail filter account), but when you click “Get Mail” it insists on checking those accounts unless you disable them completely. But then you can’t use them to send out e-mails.
I think the invisible gmail account is an awesome idea! Well done!
And here I thought I was being Miss Clever by having a nice filing system!
Let’s all rebel against the tyranny of the urgent!
I was going to respond but saw an email pop up, so hang on a minute and I will get right back to you……
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I am somewhat amuzed that this is very similar to a system I was taught over 10 years ago to cope with an overloaded of paper called the Personal Efficiency Program (PEP). Of all the expensive courses I’ve been on, its been one of the most valuable. I still maintain a “touch it once, do it now” approach to my paperwork and now my emails (see tip 5!). I would add that to start clearing the backlog I’ve either set aside a couple of days in the diary to give myself a clean sweep or eaten the elephant once slice at a time by setting a goal of five emails a day to clear. This stops the task becoming overwhelming and therefore not tackled at all.
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