Seven Tips to Streamline the Handling of Your E-mail

Here are seven great tips for you to streamline your e-mail handling:

Schedule times to receive e-mail

By selecting an option whereby you program your email software to deliver your e-mail every 90 minutes, or even every two hours, you will be able to consolidate your work. Very little is truly urgent; those urgent items are usually handled by telephone or personal visit. Better yet, turn the delivery option off completely, and YOU decide when to retrieve email – and not more than 5 times daily!

View e-mail as a tool for keeping touch, rather than an urgent communication tool

E-mail should not be an urgent communication tool. It is excellent at helping people stay informed. Anything you need in less than 3 hours should be done by phone or in person. When you use email urgently, you destroy others’ abilities to triage their work because they feel compelled to watch for your messages. Make an agreement with your work group to NEVER send an urgent email without a phone call first.

Manage your e-mail with rules

Many e-mail programs have rules that you can apply to receive e-mail. In other words, you can set up a rule to place an item automatically into one of your e-mail folders, without its going into or through your inbox. This is a great option for electronic newsletters.

Use preview pane

You can set up most e-mail programs to be able to review in “preview pane”

view. This allows you to see the content of the e-mail without having to double-click on the e-mail to open it. Every second helps!

Put the main point or request in the first 2 sentences of the email

This practice helps your readers clearly know the point of the email. Too many people “bury” the main point further down in the email. This is an excellent business letter writing practice, whether it is email or paper mail. It also forces you to be clear about exactly what you’re asking, too.

Only one subject per e-mail

We have all received the e-mails that address multiple subjects in the same e-mail, sometimes impacting different audiences. It is better to write two separate e-mails on the different subjects when the audiences are not exactly the same, rather than to combine them into one.

Make the subject line specific.

By putting detailed information in the subject line, you will enable others to properly sort their work. Many of us have a tendency to use a general subject, such as “Tuesday Meeting.” Instead, your subject will be more effective if it states “Please bring the attached handout to the Tuesday meeting.”