In This Episode…
Over the last 10 days or so I have dived deep into improving my e mail handling behaviours.
I have drawn a line under the old behaviours, I have put together my “email policy” and have fine tuned how I have applied myself to my electronic communication.
So In today’s episode I give a progress report on how things are going after just a few days.
I also reveal what I believe my next development step might be in improving my personal productivity.
Episode Transcript (Edited)…
Hi and welcome to today’s episode of the Profit Productivity Podcast. It’s your host, Michael Tipper. Who else would it be?
Now today’s episode is going to be a short one to update you on how my new approach to handling emails is actually working for me. I know it’s early days yet, but I think it’s useful to check in to see how the plan I’d put in place is actually working.
So it’s been an ongoing thing on my list of things to do – to deal with email. Last week I finally got round to sorting it out.
I had a bit of a deep dive that identified the challenges I had, and then I came up with a policy which I’ve been applying over the last few days.
I drew a line under my email dysfunctionality in one of the previous episodes and I’ve been moving forward with that ever since.
So how are things going?
Well, it’s been going really well.
My routine is to check emails once in the morning and once in the afternoon at around about 11:00 and 3:00 for around about half an hour.
With the volume of emails I’m getting at the moment, I haven’t needed all of that half an hour each time. I’ve been able to deal with the emails that have come in.
I drew a line under my email by sending myself an email message with the subject line saying I’m drawing a line on my email. And that has been the line in the sand where every email since then has been dealt with properly.
So at the moment I’ve got 36 emails in my inbox of which 31 of them are previous to the line being drawn. I still have to go back and have a look at why they haven’t been dealt with and see what systemic and process issues are not in place for me to be able to simply deal with them immediately.
A part of it could just be procrastination because of indecision or because of fear, which I’ve mentioned before. But there could be some things not in place that have allowed me to just leave them there.
So things are moving forward and I’m really pleased with the way things are going.
I’ve still got to spend time diving into what’s left before the line to see what needs to be in place. And as time goes on, I’m sure I will see emails that will identify flaws and emissions in my current processes and systems and when they come in I will spend time to deal with those.
So I think for me, gone are the days when my email inbox is going to go up to 200, 300, 400, because now I’m on top of them and I’m dealing with the ones that are important to me.
So I’m really pleased that.
I thought I’d just give you that quick update of how things are going and maybe give you a preview of what’s to come.
I’m now looking over at the paper side of my business, the correspondence with many unopened letters. And it’s interesting because I look at things I had challenges with on the electronic front and see the same on the paper front.
And I’m going to be diving into that probably over the next week or so as well to have a look at that.
So that’s todays’s episode.
Until tomorrow…
