16
Small Business email breaking point
Posted under Personal Branding Strategies by Linda Griffin
What’s your breaking point on email overload? Responses vary but a USA Today article says that for most small business owners it’s 50 emails a day.
And no wonder, with everything else we have to juggle on a daily basis. Email becomes another source of frustration that we can’t ignore because we might miss an important message from a customer or supplier.
I know people who refuse to take vacation because they don’t want to tackle the piles of emails waiting for their return. Or they feel compelled to check email every day even on vacation – just in case.
Here’s a 3 step technique I use to tame the email monster:
1). Open your email application and create a new folder. Call it anything you want – OldMail, Pending, Defer etc. You only need to do this step once.
2). On a daily basis, quickly browse the subject and sender lines of your in-basket, however, don’t open any of them. Note any that Must be answered today. Use a very stringent criteria, such as only those from a customer, supplier or partner. Don’t be mislead by those that are labeled urgent. This is the sender’s priority, not yours.
3). Take all the emails that you didn’t select in step 2 and move them to your Pending folder.
You should now be left with a very small list of items which need an immediate response. Tackle those and feel the sense of relief and accomplishment that ensues. Close your email application and move on to the top priority project you’ve determined needs your attention today.
Finally, schedule a time to open your Pending folder, maybe twice a week to view those non-urgent emails. You may find that you can just delete them. Just like a newspaper, if it’s a couple of days old, it’s value is probably close to zero.