Small Business Today Magazine AUG 2014 SIVER STONE EVENTS | Page 24
EDITORIALFEATURE
Getting Organized
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Email Management
By Holly Uverity, CPO®, Office Organizers
T
echnology was supposed to make
our business lives easier, less stressful, and more productive. With the
advent of smartphones, the opposite
has happened and our business lives have
bled into our personal lives. No longer
do we work 40 or even 50 hours a week;
because we have access to information
24/7, we’re working 24/7. Conventional
wisdom used to say that you need to stay
connected to your clients, to your industry,
and even to your competitors in order to
stay ahead. We believed that the immediacy of email would allow us to accomplish
more in less time and work “smarter, not
harder”. Conventional wisdom, as it turns
out, wasn’t so wise.
Business people whose inboxes are
overrun with email now recognize that it’s
not the liberating force it was touted to be
and is, in fact, their jailer. It can keep people tied to their gadgets and isolated from
their families and friends. While email is
truly a wonder and allows us to connect in
ways never before thought of, it’s important to remember that it is only another
tool to be managed correctly.
Managing your email is actually pretty
simple; it’s just a matter of shifting how you
perceive it and how you interact with it.
Remember, you’re in charge.
Business people whose
inboxes are overrun
with email now recognize that it’s not the
liberating force it was
touted to be and is, in
fact, their jailer.
method of delivery. Simply because
you can answer immediately doesn’t
mean you should.
• Resist the urge to check your email
first thing in the morning; give yourself anywhere from 30-60 minutes of
“email free” time each morning. Focus
instead on being proactive and taking
care of something that’s on your To
Do list.
• Decide to make a decision; making daily decisions about where your
emails go and how you’re going to
manage them keeps them from stacking up in your inbox. Decide to check
your emails at certain times of the day
only; decide to create rules to divert
specific emails to folders; decide to
unsubscribe to ezines and newsletters
you don’t read.
• Say what you need; create subject
lines that have meaning. Tell your recipients what you need or don’t need
in the subject line. Agree on standard• Disregard the method of delivery;
ized verbiage such as “FYI Only”, “Actreat your email as if it came to you via
tion Required”, or “Response Needed
interoffice mail and not electronicalby August 15, 2014”.
ly. The method of delivery is not important, it’s the information you need, • Delete the email from your inbox
so respond to the information aponce it has been handled. If you need
propriately and don’t respond to the
to keep it for a reference, move it to
Here are some guidelines to get you
started in the right direction:
22 SMALL BUSINESS TODAY MAGAZINE [ AUGUST 2014 ]
another email folder or save it in another format in the appropriate folder on your computer. If you print the
email, file the paper and delete the
email.
• Sort your emails by sender, by date,
or by topic to make it easier to work
through them. Change the subject
line of an email to reflect what you
need to do. If there are emails in your
inbox that require your action, add
the word “Action” to the beginning
of the subject line of each of those
emails and then sort by subject. All
your “Action” emails will then be together.
• Use the FAT System® on a daily basis.
There are only three things you can
do with any piece of information that
comes into your office – File it, Act on
it, or Toss it. Use this FAT System®
to Y]