TechLines: Ways To Get Your Email Under Control

The rules for workplace email may still be evolving, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t useful principles to follow when you’re trying to deal with an overloaded inbox. Here’s some ideas from our recent TechLines panel broadcast.

In the extract above, our TechLines panel — IBM Lotus GM Alistair Rennie, Intel anthropologist Genevieve Bell, RIM ANZ MD Adele Beachley and futurist Mark Pesce — identify some strategies you can use to make that crowded inbox seem less daunting. Here’s some of their ideas.

Don’t just think in an inbox-centric way. Per Pesce: “We’ve got to set fire to that.” While Inbox Zero can be a satisfying feeling, if you’re accomplishing something when you deal with each email, you are getting useful work done. Recognise that.

Ask for help. Bell makes a useful point about why we have inbox overload: “What we’re talking about is trying to re-engineer the PAs and secretaries we all got rid of. We devolved it back to ourselves and suddenly discovered we had this huge problem.”

You may not have the option of asking an assistant to help process your inbox, but asking a colleague to help set priorities can be a useful way of re-examining what you should be working on. (In this context, asking in person rather than via email might make sense.)

Don’t feel guilty about replying on a device. Answering email on the toilet or in a queue often comes in for criticism, and this panel is no excpetion. However, if that gives you more freedom for other tasks, it can be worthwhile. As Beachley says: “It’s putting time back into your day.”

Realise that strategies vary depending on your goal. The requirements of finishing up a major project are very different to a non-specific task such as “I’m going to catch up with all my email”. Recognise that the two goals won’t always match up. As Rennie put it: “The context will never stop shifting, so you can never get a precise answer.”

Set yourself a word limit. Got a lot of email to reply to? Set yourself the challenge of replying in a fixed number of words or within 140 characters, Twitter-style. As Bell points out: “Telegrams were much more snippy when you had to pay 10 cents a word.”

If you want to see the entire TechLines show, you can watch it here, or check out the 30 minute highlight version.

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