Email Is a Tool—Use It Well: Make Email Work For You
This is definitely an installment of “you asked for it. Let's talk about it.”
The topic today is email.
You may love it, you may hate it, you may feel a little of both given the day. I get it.
I love it as an amazing communication and information sharing tool. It boggles my mind, thinking about how we survived before email. AND, I am annoyed by email, by the vast amount of input I need to manage, worrying about what I might have missed or forgotten to handle, etc. Both can be true.
I am often asked about email and was challenged by a faithful Finish Line Friday attendee to write / record about managing email. It’s a good conclusion to my recent professional communications series.
And, I am going to be purposely vague about email account specifics because there are a lot of options out there. So let’s consider HOW we manage our accounts, independent of who hosts the account.
Before we delve into email account management, please answer this question for yourself:
What do I want email to do for me? What functions does email serve for me?
For example, my email serves to receive and send information and communication, both personally and professionally. We don't get much actual mail, by design. I don't want actual mail. Personally and professionally, we use email to send and receive correspondence, handle bill paying and and manage bank statements and investment statements. I also choose to receive my news media via email, plus newsletters I subscribe to based on my interests. So I'm okay that there's a lot of action going on there.
Answer for yourself, What do I want email to do for me? What functions does email serve for me?
Something interesting happened last week. I logged into my professional email account, my Colleen@peaceofmindpo.com account on my laptop and everything looked completely different. Apparently, there was an update. My provider probably mentioned it was coming, but it was a shock.
On the plus side, it added some features that I like. For example, on my personal Gmail account, I really like the Promotions Tab. I drag a lot of messages over to the Promotions, like advertisements from retailers I regularly purchase from and that keeps my Gmail inbox uncluttered. And my professional email account added that feature.
I have edited the original whining and long winded explanation of other changes I need to make to my newly updated professional email, and instead, I’ll share my first tip, and our first focus area:
TIP Personalize your account.
For example, in the next week, I will explore the new features of my professional email account, view any virtual tours offered on how to maximize the experience, and adjust my preference settings before I get cranky just because something changes.
(TIP Try not to waste time getting cranky over something you have the power to change.)
Spend time personalizing your account to make it work for you. It’s good to know we have options. We can adjust the appearance on the screen down to the background color and font, or your signature line. And we can adjust how emails are handled, like the Promotions tab in Gmail, or routing messages sent from specific addresses to designated folders before they even enter our in-box.
TIP Train your email account to handle things in a different, in a certain way.
As mentioned, when I drag messages to the Gmail promotions tab, it will ask “do you want all future messages from this particular email address to go into promotions”, and I can say yes.
TIP Folders. For goodness sake, create some folders.
Seeing an in-box that is just all in-box makes me itchy.
Designate some folders for your COMPLETED work and get in the habit of using them.
And NO, they cannot be named “Miscellaneous”.
Shifting from personalizing to Clean Up and Maintaining:
Here is perhaps a bitter pill to swallow. Sorry. But, we create a lot of the messes in our inbox. When we sign up for emails or sales, etc., we invite the messages. And if we don’t tidy up there once in a while, it only gets worse. The best news, though, is that we also have the means to remedy the mess!
DECLUTTER
In my paper management class, I share resources to eliminate mail before it even enters your mailbox, and we can do that with email, too.
TIP Unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsubscribe.
Every few weeks, I’ll take a few minutes and unsubscribe from newsletters or retailers cluttering up my in-box, or drag them to promotions.
I see positive results within a day, which is great.
NEXT level, go to your promotions tabs and spam folders and unsubscribe there, too.
TIP Report Spam if it’s Spam.
Take the extra few seconds and actually report spam messages.
TIP Create a shopping / purchasing folder, or for example, the Promotions tab:
For example, a few months ago, I moved all retail and shopping messages and accounts over to my Gmail account, and then immediately assigned them to the promotions tab.
I still receive advertisements and offers, and can seek them out if I need to purchase something, but they don’t clutter my inbox.
I don’t recommend this, but you could create a throw-away account for purchases, or have an email account just for bill paying, for example. Gmail is free and you can create more than one account. The problem, of course, is that creating another address means more management.
TIP Yearly, or more often, take a quick glance through your folders and delete anything that's no longer important to you. Better to delete the old stuff than get the angry email from Google or your provider that you’ve used all your storage.
For example, my last son graduated from high school 4 years ago. We still run a fundraising program at the high school, so I still have a folder called “Brother Rice”, but as I wrote this article, I went and deleted 1000 old emails from that folder.
Ok, You’ve made adjustments to your settings, teaching your account about how you like your messages, good job! And, you’ve removed clutter from your in-box and taken steps to keep the mess away. Good job!
Now, let’s talk maintenance! Maintenance is the secret sauce. How many times do I say that? I know - many!- but it's the truth. Habits around maintaining order in our in-box are the secret to an email account that works for you!
TIP Decide on your email checking strategy. Frequency, time of day, etc.
This will vary widely depending on if you use email for work or not. When I am in my office, I am constantly in my professional email, doing the work. If I am working with a client or teaching a class, however, I may only check in every few hours.
Working on paper management with a client last week, she mentioned she prefers email over texting for communicating with friends and family. And she decided that since email is her chosen method for communication, she should check it a little more often, at least a couple times a day, to pay better attention. Wise.
What does frequency look like for you? If you use email for paying bills and consuming media, check less often, or using it for work, check more often.
TIP Decide on your email WORKING strategy. And yes, friends, checking and working are two different tasks. Checking email is not the same as working on your email.
After checking our email and prioritizing the work, we will likely need a block of time to get things done.
I have an order of operations when I open my email account.
First, a quick scan of my in-box and determine if there’s something important that I can / must answer quickly. (“Important” is key here!)
perhaps flagging anything that catches my attention.
Then, a very quick mass deletion of anything I don’t need today, or dragging ads to my promotions tab for later.
Then going back and actually working through the emails that I receive. Processing speaking requests and client scheduling requests, adding follow up items to my to-do list.
Adding information to my calendar for upcoming events.
Reading my news media or newsletters if I have time.
TIP You may like the app better than the website, and vice versa. Explore your options and find what you are most comfortable with.
I find it much easier to delete unneeded messages on my phone, so I might do that before I log into my accounts on my laptop.
TIP Check your Spam folder regularly.
Twice a week, I have a task on my to-do list to check my Spam folders and Promo tab. Sometimes, messages from people I want to hear from end up in Spam, so I check to make sure I haven’t missed someone. It takes 5 minutes, max, to check spam and my promo tab and delete a few hundred messages.
TIP Make a routine for decluttering.
Unsubscribe from everything you could possibly unsubscribe from, AND make sure to do that on a regular basis. Messages will still trickle through, so leave yourself a note on the first of every month, for example, to review your inbox, promotions, spam folder and other folders and delete anything that isn't still serving you. That's a great habit to get into.
If you are still frustrated with the amount of emails in your inbox,
TIP Do not use your in-box as a to-do list. OR a bulletin board.
We don’t keep a piece of paper to remind us to do something, we add a reminder to our to-do list.
Same goes for emails. Leaving messages in your in-box as a reminder but not having a process for actually doing the task is setting ourselves up for failure.
The email account is a tool, the to-do list is a tool. And things can get lost in the in-box, so don’t rely on it to remind you of tasks.
Add information from emails into the appropriate place holders.
For example, If you’re traveling and receive an email confirmation for your flight, add the flight to your calendar and attach all the pertinent info in a note on the event. Keep the info where you need it and NOT swimming in your in-box.
If I book a presentation, I add all the pertinent information to the event on my calendar and refer to THAT instead of wandering around my email folders.
Yes, I have a SPEAKING Folder and a TRAVEL Folder, but putting the info where I need it eliminates so much hassle.
Get in the habit of moving completed work to folders instead of leaving in your in-box. COMPLETED work.
We get to choose how to set up our accounts and handle our emails. But we actually have to choose.
What did we learn:
Email is a tool, and thankfully, a highly personalizable tool.
Spending time personalizing your account will save you time later.
As in anywhere we want to get organized, we clear clutter from our inbox, sometimes before it even arrives. And create habits around keeping the clutter away.
Then, consider frequency of checking email, and also carving out time to COMPLETE the work in your in-box.
Use other tools, as well, in conjunction with the tool of email like a good calendar and a to-do list.
Email is a tool that should work for you, not the other way around!
