{"id":4036,"date":"2010-03-31T22:12:03","date_gmt":"2010-04-01T05:12:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=4036"},"modified":"2010-03-31T22:12:03","modified_gmt":"2010-04-01T05:12:03","slug":"use-a-%e2%80%9cdecision-tree%e2%80%9d-for-effective-daily-e-mail-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=4036","title":{"rendered":"Use a \u201cDecision Tree\u201d for Effective Daily E-mail Management"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\"Process<\/a>
"Taming E-mail" Decision Tree<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In my last blog post, I discussed how to use a daily \u201cmorning routine\u201d to help guarantee that your key priorities and projects help determine your daily actions, rather than just your e-mail. In that article, I argued that checking your e-mail should be the 4th<\/sup> thing you do at the start of each day \u2013 not the first! \u2013 to allow you to get your projects and priorities top of mind as you build your work plan and delegation plan for the day. Now, I’d like to discuss my recommendations on how to handle all of the new e-mails that come in periodically throughout the day, so that you can both effectively handle those new e-mails and integrate them into your plans for the day.<\/p>\n

IMPORTANT FIRST NOTE: Before I get into discussion of the \u201ce-mail decision tree\u201d methodology I share in my live speaking\/training programs and my book, Taming the E-mail Beast<\/em>, I want to discuss when you should check your e-mail throughout the day. I am a firm believer that the vast majority of office-based working professionals should NOT be checking their e-mail \u201cas they come in\u201d, unless it is a designated part of their job description and duties. The reason for this: tangible scientific evidence has proven that people checking e-mail too often (as well as receiving\/taking phone calls, checking voice mail, reviewing IM & text messages, and dealing with unexpected interruptions) suffer a tangible 10 point hit to their IQ \u2013 that’s equivalent to missing an entire night’s sleep! (Source: recent study by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London)\u2013 and of course that will not help you to manage your projects or be an attentive professional.<\/p>\n

Instead, I strongly believe that professionals should find and define a daily regimen that allows them to be \u201creasonably responsive\u201d with those sending them e-mail, while also balancing their needs to manage projects and \u201cget things done\u201d! That may mean checking your e-mail every 60-90 minutes if you have high client responsiveness needs (internal or external), or checking your e-mail only 3-4 times a day if you are working on task-based activities and projects.<\/p>\n

When you do check your e-mail, I recommend you follow the following process each and every time you check your e-mail:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Determine the time-cost of the \ttask inside each individual e-mail. If the time-cost is three \tminutes or less, just get the task done. This is classic David \tAllen GTD strategy \u2013 don’t let \u201cquick little\u201d tasks build up \tin your inbox! Handle them immediately, and then either file or \tdelete the e-mail.<\/li>\n
  2. If the task inside the e-mail \ttakes longer than three minutes, then you want to integrate it into \tyour prioritized task list. This allows you to deal with this task \tat an appropriate time according to urgency and\/or importance. (In \tmy MS Outlook classes, I teach people how to \u201cdrag and drop\u201d an \te-mail from their inbox over onto their \u201cTask\u201d icon \u2013 this \tauto-creates a new task item in Outlook. Simply rename the subject \tline so it reflects the actual task that needs to be done, mark the \tappropriate due date, priority and category of the task [that is \tusually the name of the project to which it is related.] Now that \te-mail has become a task in your Outlook task list, which you can \tonce again deal with according to appropriate priority\/urgency.) Of \tinterest, a recent study found that the average professional reads \tan e-mail 3-7 times before deciding what needs to be done with that \te-mail and or taking action on it \u2013 if you follow steps 1 and 2 of \tthis process, you will read an e-mail ONE time before deciding what \tneeds to be done and or taking the designated action \u2013 that \teliminates significant rework and review, leading to direct and \timmediate time savings.<\/em><\/li>\n
  3. Once the task(s) inside of the \te-mail has either been completed or added to your prioritized task \tlist, either delete the e-mail, or file it into an appropriate \te-mail folder\/subfolder in your inbox.<\/li>\n
  4. If you want to save the e-mail, \tbut you do not have a good folder in which to save it, create a new \tfolder.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    You can handle each and every e-mail \tyou receive following this simple 4-step process. By doing so, you \tare identifying the incumbent task(s) inside of an e-mail, getting \tthem done if they are simply \u201cquick little things\u201d, converting \tthem to prioritized tasks if they are not so quick, and then either \tdeleting or filing the e-mail. Thus, e-mails do not stack up and \tclutter your inbox, keeping your inbox clean and efficient (and also \tmaking certain that all embedded tasks inside of those e-mails are \tidentified and completed and\/or prioritized \u2013 no more missed \tdeliverables!)<\/p>\n

    Of course, this system works even \tbetter if you have set up appropriate archiving and backup of your \te-mail folders and subfolders, and your e-mail software allows you \tto easily search for messages not only in your inbox\/sent folder, \tbut also inside of your individual subfolders. The process allows \tyou to keep your inbox at or near zero on a daily basis, which gives \tyou much greater confidence that you are closing loops\/tracking and \tcompleting deliverables appropriately. And if you cannot keep up \twith your flow of e-mail when you follow this process, that may \tindicate that you need to bring additional resources to bear to help \tyou with managing your e-mail information flow. (Of course, if you \thave let your inbox get cluttered with hundreds or even thousands of \tpast \u201carchival\u201d messages, you may need to spend some time \tgetting those archival e-mails under control before you can begin \tfollowing the process above completely and with confidence. I \tdiscuss strategies for regaining control over an out of control \te-mail inbox in my recent book, Taming the E-mail Beast<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

    It is a simple and elegant process for \tmanaging e-mail throughout the day that has helped literally \tthousands of professionals, managers, administrators, and project \tmanagers all across North America. It handles urgency, keeps things \tmoving, effectively prioritizes, and gives you a sense of sanity and \tcontrol over your e-mail, rather than it controlling you. I \trecommend you try it for a couple weeks, and let me know how it is \tworking for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Randy Dean shares his “e-mail decision tree” for handling new e-mails received throughout the day, balancing time to complete embedded tasks inside of those e-mails, priority of the tasks in those e-mails, and your desire for organizational efficiency inside of your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1498,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1],"tags":[703,706,694,701,113,702,710,707,711,709,705,181,14,713,712,708,714,704],"class_list":["post-4036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-time-management","category-miscellaneous","tag-archiving","tag-david-allen","tag-e-mail","tag-efficiency","tag-email","tag-filing","tag-flow","tag-gtd","tag-inbox","tag-information-overload","tag-outlook","tag-process","tag-productivity","tag-randall-dean","tag-randy-dean","tag-regimen","tag-taming-the-e-mail-beast","tag-tasks"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1498"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29159,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4036\/revisions\/29159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}