Friedbeef’s Tech

“Excessive time is spent reading and writing e-mails, with approximately 65% (of workers) spending from 1 to 3 hours per day on it” via Information Mapping Survey

A few days ago I went through the first stage in defeating email overload. This article is part 2 of my personal methodology to achieving email Zen in Outlook.

Stage 1: Get to Zero Email In Your Inbox

Stage 2: Working from your Followup Folder

After going through Stage 1, only the email in your followup folder needs to be dealt with. Everything else should have been answered on the spot or deleted. Here’s what you do next…

1. Arrange the email by reminder time so you know which ones you should work on, and which ones can wait. By doing this, you break down your big tasks into smaller action points - each with it’s own timeline for followup, so you tackle one thing at a time, rather than worry about a long term overarching project. (See picture above)

2. Do ONLY the items which you have flagged as ‘needing action today’. Do not work on anything else meant for the future unless you have finished the ‘today’ items. This combats procrastination and allows you to keep other less urgent work at bay.

3. Once the email is attended to, delete it. Reduce the clutter, and get those emails out of sight, and out of mind.

4. If it requires a followup reply, copy yourself on the email. Yes, you read right - copy yourself. Keep the email you send to yourself, and delete the original email. This accomplishes 2 things:

• Your to-do list and your inbox becomes a single entity. Everything you need to do is captured in your inbox, and you have email to use as context. No more confusion caused by switching between to-do lists and your ’sent items’ folder.
• If you need to send a reminder, the latest email conversation is always at hand so you never need to look for it to help put your request in context.

5. When you receive the email you copied yourself, flag a later reminder time to it, and drag it back to your followup folder. This becomes an action point for a later time to follow up your request.

Use the zero inbox strategy, and you will work your way down to an empty inbox. Use the steps above, and you will address anything else that needs additional followup in a systematic manner.

Even if you have a million things to do at once, the method above will make sure:

• Your most important work gets done first
• You only tackle one task at a time without getting distracted
• None of your work, even the little tasks ever slips under the radar

Note: Email shouldn’t be permanently deleted, just let it sit in your ‘deleted items’ folder, so you can still get to it at a later point in time. Do not enable any options that will automatically empty your ‘deleted items’ folder upon exiting Outlook.

Part 1: Get to Zero Email In Your Inbox

Part 2: Working From Your Followup Folder

Part 3: Fine Tune Your Outlook Workflow