Take Control Over Your Emails and Optimize Your Time

Emails, no matter what your post or field is, we all deal with these, especially nowadays, when everything is going digital. There are so many software that can automate emails for you (psst! we also have one, if you want to try, go here). Some of these automation software is powered by AI (just like ours) to give you the best automation results. But what about reading, writing, or responding to emails? You can not leave that to a machine, right?

I am not going to say we have software for that too, but managing your emails and responding to them is a whole different thing. It is also directly connected to your time management. Time is a limited resource that we all possess, and one needs to learn how to manage time to do more in less. To make sure you optimize your time, let’s know about the time-wasting traps emails are filled with.

Inbox is Not a To-Do List:

At what time do you check your emails daily? It is in the morning time for so many people. After going through your emails, you make your to-do list based upon them. But, is this to-do list going to lead you toward your today’s goals? No, it won’t. This to-do list will help you reach other people’s agenda, not yours. And if you follow this list, you will never accomplish your tasks, and at the end of the day, you might get demotivated or disappointed by yourself.

To do this efficiently, make three to-do lists, Priority 01, Priority 02, and Priority 03. In Priority 01, put all the tasks that you can care of right away. Now for Priority 02 and Priority 03, find some slots in your daily time table. In this span, you will only work on your email tasks and nothing else. This way, you will be able to work on your agendas and others’ agendas too. Managing tasks with time is crucial in not only personal but professional life also.

When You Are Done:

Now that you learned how to manage your task and save time, it’s time to tame your inbox now. Move that email or task to archive or trash as you get done with your tasks. Moving them to archive or trash doesn’t sound like a big step, but it saves you from a clustered inbox.

Only tasks that you need to work upon should be in your inbox, nothing more. Once you take the required action, you will understand how this step takes you closer to managing your time.

(Too Much) Productivity Apps Makes You Unproductive:

One good thing about technology is it makes your work efficient and less time-consuming. A bad thing about technology is it can make your work complex, resulting in unproductivity and time wastage. But how can a thing build or ruin your work?

The answer is simple. Too much relying on technology will harm your time management. Do not use too much management software or add-ons. They only will waste your time and nothing else. Try to achieve your goals without extra management software.

Instead, too much use of technology will turn into another task for you. That means technology will become the very thing it was supposed to destroy. So instead of depending on technology, start managing things by yourself.

Keep Work and Login Email Separate:

Managing one email is hard, and now we are saying that you should have two; sounds weird, right? Actually, this is more about security than being productive. While at work, we sometimes use work email to log in at different sites. It may look like it helps you log in quickly, but it clusters your inbox with unnecessary emails.

Not only that, when you log in on a public site with company emails, you are making your account more vulnerable to hackers. Once a hacker is in your email, he or she can easily sneak into other emails of your organization.

Protect your emails with these hazards, use a separate email for logins. It might take a few seconds or more, but you can not jeopardise security like this. By doing this, you are stopping a cyber-crime from ever happening.

Answering Emails:

We will go through this point in three steps; not answering quickly, not answering fully, too much answering.

People expect fast, if not immediate, replies. Getting quick responses makes your customers feel more valued. According to a study, 80 percent of customers expect businesses to respond within 24 hours, where 37 percent expect answers within an hour. So try to be quick while responding to your customers.

When you do not answer your emails fully, you encourage more emails from customers. And more emails means more time wasted to manage emails and chat with customers. This excess of traffic will increase your response time and will slow you down.

When you try to answer emails fully, do not overdo it. Fully answering an email doesn’t mean you have to write an article. Just address the points in the emails while keeping your sentences short and meaningful. Try to end emails in five to six lines max.

Difference Between Reply and Reply All:

When you create an email, not only you but people receiving it are also investing time in it. So while replying to emails, remember not to press reply all unless it is necessary. Make sure you are sending emails to people who need it. Clustering others' inbox is not a good habit. Once you break this ‘Reply All’ chain, the next ‘Reply All’ will include only people who know about the conversation.

Emotions Can Cloud Your Writing:

As this saying goes, “Don’t let your emotions drive decisions you make.” Whether you are upset, angry, too happy, too neutral, try to suppress these emotions while writing an email. If you can’t do that, try to talk to the person involved face-to-face (on video call during the pandemic) or over a phone call.

Time is precious for us all. Try to give the same value to everyone’s times as you give to yours. Once you start working on these errors, you will achieve more in less time and become more productive.