We all deal with E-mail. Whether we’re writing, reading, or deleting, e-mail is a regular hassle and can be extremely unproductive. Especially if you’re a type of person that responds immediately to e-mail. Here are a few tips to help you deal with the daily deluge of mail:
Zone your time:
Zoning your time involves breaking everything into half-hour increments and dedicating to work only on a specific task for that amount of time. That means if you’re going to check your email once, you have to spend a half-hour looking through emails. It would be extremely unproductive to look at only one email and then sit for a half hour, so it forces you to really question whether or not you REALLY need to deal with the email or if it can sit for a half-hour.
The unsubscribe link is your friend:
Do you REALLY need to see which newest item is on sale today? Or which Groupon was pushed out? Odds are you don’t, and checking them on a regular basis distracts you from your other tasks.
Disable notifications:
If you don’t know an email is waiting for you, you’re less likely to worry until you check it. 99% of emails don’t need to be responded to right away anyway.
Use your Auto-responder:
Your auto-responder can help people to better understand and anticipate your timeframe, and response rate so that you don’t get “emergency” emails at two in the morning on Saturday. If people know you can’t be reached, then they won’t bug you or at least won’t expect a response until the weekday starts again.
These are just a few small tips for email stuff, and there are a lot more ways to go about these methods. If you’re looking, there are always better ways to improve your productivity.
We recommend at least watching Behance.com for more specific recommendations.