E-Mail and Efficiency

E-Mail is a vital communication tool today. However, there is a possibility of spending too much time on E-Mail, thus reducing your work efficiency. Here is a tip to identify if you are spending too much time on E-Mail: First of all, maintain an E-Mail log, and record how frequently you check E-Mail.You can do this with a sheet of paper. Do it for about per week, and see how much time you are spending on E-Mail. Measure it against the average E-Mail received in your Inbox. If you are checking your E-Mail so often that you do not receive any new E-Mail till your third or fourth check, you are certainly wasting too much time. Try a pattern for checking E-Mail based on any pattern you can find in new E-Mails reaching your Inbox. If you discover that you receive most new E-Mails during lunchtime or just before closing time, alter your pattern accordingly. You will find yourself improving on efficiency automatically in a very short time!

Anticipate

As email is a back-and-forth method of communicating, and it can take a day or more for a response (in some cases), you want to limit the number of times a message has to go back and forth. To do that, use “if … then” statements, anticipating the possible responses to your question.

By anticipating the possible responses, and giving a desired action for each possible response, you’re cutting a lot of wasted back-and-forth time.