I was joking last week with a friend who also works with Team Expansion. We were talking about the email deluge that sometimes floods our inboxes. He later sent me this link…
http://news.yahoo.com/tech-firm-implements-employee-zero-email-policy-165311050.html
[This URL will likely wrap or break apart. If you have trouble assembling it and clicking it, just find this item at brigade.org and click it there.]
This story is about a tech firm with a goal of implementing a zero-email policy. Now, in my opinion, maybe that’s just a hair over the top, but I’ll have to admit — I’m eager to hear your feedback on how you manage it these days. If you don’t mind, please click “Comment” below this item and tell us your strategy, especially if it’s working.
:-)
The main issue is that we are all achieving more in a days work due to the massive amounts of email we are writing and responding to. In the days before email, the volume of work would be much less. So for one thing, we need to be grateful for the ease of communication and effectiveness in responding. Thus the options are to hire more people, so the amount of emails is less per person. Of course if you are emailing non work related stuff, then stopping that is the obvious way to reduce your email load. For us to have a no email policy would mean to shut down the shop. If we make one day email free, that just means more emails for the rest of the week.
I use the strategy of David Allen from his book Getting Things Done and totally empty my inbox regularly. After working with the system for a few months, I attended the Mastering Workflow seminar to get help refining my implementation. His organization does give a generous non profit discount if you ask.
Tony — I’m very tempted!
Missed Outlook at ton, by have recently discovered that Mac Mail + MailTags (a $30’ish add-on) can do some amazing things when in-box rules are set.
It sorts stuff, forwards stuff, tags stuff… Combined w/ Mail’s “smart mailboxes” I’ve never been a fraction of this effective/efficient in dealing w/ high volumes of emails.
K, You didn’t want to buy Outlook for the Mac? My wife recently switched to a Mac, and I couldn’t bear to see her use that dumbed-down email program that comes with the OS. I had to get her Outlook. She’s been very happy.
It pays to take some time to create templates for frequent responses, even if they are for different parts of the e-mail. I seldom have to write an introduction or ending to an e-mail thanks to a (free) program such as PhraseExpress. Also, I make extensive use of signatures and rules in Outlook. All of this serves to cut off seconds per e-mail and add up to an empty inbox (sometimes).
Wow Duane. I’m reading about it now. http://www.phraseexpress.com/ Looks very interesting!!!
be born before 1950…
This article was a big help to me earlier this year: Yes, You Can Stay on Top of Email byMichael Hyatt http://michaelhyatt.com/yes-you-can-stay-on-top-of-email.html