Avoid the Email Trap

You know those days. You greet the day- and your desk with lofty aspirations for productivity.  And as the hours whittle down, somehow the check marks on your to-do list become conspicuously absent.

Email, a tool meant to facilitate, quickly becomes your adversary, as it represents a material threat to your productivity if not brought under control. Here are some ways you can avoid the email trap.
Block time

It’s logical really. The best way to neutralize a threat is to contain it. The same can be said with email. Block off time everyday to deal with emails- and be ruthless in guarding it. Be sure to not set this particular block of time during a part of the day that you know you are most productive for other tasks- like phone calls or prospecting, for instance. The health of your bottom line relies on it.

Help yourself stick to this plan by letting people know when your email blocks are. This accomplishes a couple of things: it helps to define and communicate expectations, as well as holds you to your commitment to keep a set time aside for a set task.

Some people even include their times for “email blocks” as an auto-response.

Shut off arrival sounds

As email will show up throughout your day, the constant temptation will be there to attend to it. At the very least, you may be curious to see who is contacting you, and what glorious opportunity lies in your inbox.

As you know, chances are, there is very little in there that can’t wait until the allotted time; avoid the temptation to constantly be checking by removing arrival notifications.

Filters are your friends.

Think of your inbox like your desk. You can’t possibly sit down to work well, if it is covered in items not helpful to the task at hand.

Use your spam filter to cut down on the debris filing into your inbox. The less emails you need to read out of the gate, means more time in your pocket.
You can also use other filters with key words, or senders to file into folders. This is a good way of staying on top of things, so that when you do sit down to work, you can get right to it.

Attack with a Strategy

Like all other aspects of your business, much of your success hinges on successful identification and implementation of strategy.

When you do sit down to work through your emails, have a specific plan in mind on how to action them. Try to adopt a “one touch” method.
Where reasonably possible, say if the task in the email can be done in five minutes or less, do it immediately, and delete it.

For more involved tasks, have folders and a set time to action them in. Make sure to prioritize those requests. It goes without saying, in the relationship business, client requests trump others.

Set Outlook to Calendar Screen

First and foremost, email is meant to be a tool to help you keep top priorities on top.

Consider setting Outlook to open with your calendar, rather than the inbox, to reinforce the sliver of time that email should have in your whole day. This also helps outline and plan for priorities on a daily basis, and removes the temptation to dive right into the inbox at every glance.

They say time flies when you are having fun. The real truth-is time flies- right out of your hands- when you do not control how it is spent. This holds particularly true when it comes to email. 

Brought to you by Property Wire