Email is NOT Your Boss | Top 5 Tips to Avoid the Email Black Hole
Email is one of the biggest time wasters
Email is busywork
Email is not a revenue-generating activity
Email is a black hole
Email blocks you from doing your work
Do you start your day checking your email? What happens next? You start REACTING to the emails and your plan for the day disappears. You look up 3 hours later and nothing that you wanted to get accomplished has been done.
Checking your email first thing puts you in a reactive frame of mind. Instead of checking off your to-do list, your email becomes your to-do list and everything you wanted to accomplish will get pushed to tomorrow or next week.
Also, if you respond to emails 24/7 and within 3 minutes of receiving them, you are not setting clear boundaries or expectations for your clients. They will start emailing you 24/7 and expect a response within 3 minutes every time.
Here are 5 Top Tips to Avoid the Email Black Hole:
Wait until the afternoon to check your email. Start your morning with your priorities, not someone else’s
Check it less frequently. You don’t need to check it every hour
Use really specific email subjects. Instead of a subject line that says: “hey” or “meeting”, Use “Question about our meeting next week” or “Here are the 4Q reports”
Use email templates inside Goggle to prevent writing the same email over and over again
Your inbox is not a filing cabinet. Handle the email, attach it to a client file if needed and then DELETE it. Yes, I really said that. You should not have 17,000+ emails in your inbox.
Bonus: Check if you need to just reply or reply all. Think before you click. Do you really need to respond to the entire office on the blast email that you are bringing cups to the Holiday party? No!
Get out of your inbox and get sh*t done!
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