Are you a slave to or are you drowning in email? Handling email inbox overload

29/07/2010: Are you a slave to or are you drowning in email? Handling email inbox overload. My new executive assistant Nell and I are trialling a new email management system because I am quite simply drowning at the office. I get about 400 emails a day and as CEO of a PR agency, they are a mixture of client correspondence, requests for me to speak, newsletters, industry updates and immediate requests for help from prospects.

I am eternally frustrated with sitting at a computer for longer than I have to; or working from my PDA. While email remains the most used mode of business communication, it's also considered to be the number one productivity killer in the workplace. Email is like a drug.

I am probably one of the most organised people I know, but I resent every moment I am glued to a computer screen and refuse to become a slave to email or have it manage me. So at Taurus, we are going through defining a process to unsubscribe, prioritise, flag, file, colour code and follow up. The danger is to treat email as an unfocused, unflagged, unprioritised to-do list.

My main fear is that we will miss an important request. But meanwhile, I fear my staff and I spend time reading and answering unimportant emails.

I reckon email takes me an hour a day to respond to and an hour at least to clear and file. Many of those emails are unnecessary and we just delete them.

I don't close sales by email. I do that face to face or on the phone. So email to me is a confirmer and informer and nothing else.

In spite of that most emails carry expectations of a response, but really are many worthy of one?

Some facts and figures:

• A 2007 Basex Research study estimated that businesses lose $650 billion annually in productivity due to unnecessary email interruptions.

• More than 53 percent of the emails received are low priority.

• Approximately 18 percent of important emails go unread or are seriously delayed.

• Approximately 36 percent of unimportant email is being read.

• Almost 50 percent of your important email requires action; this can lead to excess time spent prioritising emails or searching for actionable email.

Here are our top tips to handle our email. I'd really welcome your help and advice on what you use in your workplace:

• To increase your productivity, read things only once.

• Separate the items that need action from other emails within your inbox so you have a focused to-do list in a separate place. We separate emails into 'adiary', and 'aprospects' and 'aspeakingengagements' immediately. Outlook's inflexibility in the filing function of subfolders in Inbox makes it difficult to create a 'personalised' filing system that supports and reflects your business needs; it's strictly alphabetical. Flexibility in this would help a lot; your thoughts?

• Don't respond to emails unless you really need to. Don't feel you have to answer everyone if it's not essential.

• Be disciplined as to when you check your email inbox. Do it at certain times of the day.

• Set up filters to prioritise emails. Create a filter with the email addresses of your online newsletters so that they automatically archive and then you can decide when you check them; once a day or once a week.

• Set follow-up reminders for email that you are not ready for immediately so you get automatic notifications of future actions.

• To help highlight important incoming emails colour code your important contacts (co-workers, colleagues, advertisers, business associates, family etc.) in the 'from' field. Label these 'important'.

The real problem with email is the lack of business structure around the etiquette of its use. When business relied on 'snail mail' and the telephone, did we achieve just as much with less correspondence? A letter required composing, typing, generally by someone else, approving, mailing and receiving. The process took longer to execute and so imposed greater self regulation. The addiction to email today has made us slaves to our computer and the volume of correspondence in our inbox interferes with our ability to sort wheat from chaff.

Other senior colleagues of mine have been so overwhelmed by the demands of email they have created an 'automatic response' email that redirects incoming mail to a choice of email options such as 'support', 'speaking information', 'testimonials' — sort of a text version of a telephone voice menu option.

I'm not sure what the real solution to our dilemma is. How do you manage your email inbox? What are your thoughts and tips?

To view this blog on ninemsn, click here.

‍