My Two Biggest Mistakes In Handling Email

English: email envelope

Very few emails require our immediate attention. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sometimes we just don’t do the things that are good for us.  We know we should do them, but yet we don’t.  I want to be a little slimmer and a little healthier and I know what actions will help me to do that and which actions will not, but I don’t always make the right choice.

There are also a number of things that I can do to be more efficient and get the most out of my workday.  Likewise there are things I do that I know are inefficient and clearly not productive ways to spend my time.  I know the difference between efficient uses of my time and inefficient uses of my time, but yet I still occasionally make bad choices.

Two of the bad choices I seem to make on a pretty consistent basis are related to email.  I want to share them with you to see if I am the only one that makes these bad choices.

1.  Turn off the instant “pop up” notification when you get a new email – If you use outlook the default is for a little pop up window to appear every time you get a new email.  That’s great unless you happen to be in the middle of doing something extremely productive and the pop up causes you to completely lose your train of thought.  I understand the point of the pop up notification.  It will notify you if you get a super important email that needs to be responded to immediately.  So how many of those do you get?  I get a lot of emails, but I get very few that can’t wait an hour or so for a response.  A much more efficient use of my time would be to turn off the instant notifications and just check my email at scheduled times.  Not only would it be more efficient, but it would help me to connect better with people.  When I am talking to someone in my office or even on the phone, I know that I get distracted by the pop up notifications.  I am not giving the person that I am talking to 100% of my attention.  How rude is that?

Do you get pop up notifications for each email that you receive?  If so why?  Does it distract you when you are engaged in other activities?

2.  Handle email once – After I get the pop up notification, I then like to take a quick look at the email that just came in.  I will scan it real quickly then go back to doing whatever I was doing when it came in.  I may delete it if I know it is not relevant to me, but in most cases I am just going to leave it there in my inbox.  I do have set times in the day where I review my inbox and take the appropriate actions.  When that time occurs, I now have to go back and reread the email that I already scanned once and then take the appropriate action.  I will respond, delete, file, or forward it.  What is the value in reading each email twice? It may only take me a few seconds to scan each email the first time, but that is a few seconds multiplied by at least 100 on a slow day for me.  That time adds up and the initial scanning really does not add any value to the process.  So why am I reading it twice.  I don’t do that with snail mail.  When I go to my mailbox I throw away all the junk mail and then put the bills in a spot where I keep them until it is time to pay them.  I don’t even open them. I just put them in their spot.  I certainly don’t shove things back into the mailbox so that I can deal with them later.  Why is it different with email?

Do you read emails multiple times before actually dealing with them?  If so why?

I am committed to fixing these two issues.  I have turned off my pop up notifications and I am committed to handling each email only once.

What other email sins are you guilty of?


Link to original post

Leave a Reply