How's your work email inbox looking ?

Give yourself certain times to go through emails. I do it first thing in the morning, then straight after each break (coffee and lunch breaks) and a final look at 4pm to finish up the day. If anybody needs an urgent answer, they'll ring you.

I’ve noticed this too. Decided today that I’m only giving time to what I’m actually supposed to be working on, ignored everything else. Got a lot done today.

you should run your day from your calendar, not from emails. that helps put structure around your day and not spend time jumping to other people's requests. stick in a slot every 2 hours to check emails, and categorise them urgent and important, urgent not important, important not urgent and neuther urgent nor important, then see if you can delegate or reassign anything and if not, schedule time in for each category. you can run your work or your work can run you, personally i pick the first option. finally, make sure to block time off in your calendar every day to make sure you're not in back to back meetings.

You can set up filters and actions easily

For example "mark as read where I am cc'd but not the To:" this cuts down hugely on the cc round robins

Group by conversation is another good one.

One primary thing to remember is email is just that , mail. There is no onus on you to read it immediately. Turn off the notifications for new email. Deal with email when YOU want to. If the matter was urgent and important , it should not have been in an email, someone will ring you to discuss.

What you can realistically do depends on your job duties and your employer's expectations. If you are expected to be available and respond immediately to communications as part of your normal job duties (e.g. you're in a support role of some sort and expected to be available when people reach out to you for help), then it's going to be harder to push back.

If such immediate responses aren't part of your normal job duties, then there are some things you can try:

- Turn off notifications for your emails, or configure your email client to only notify you on particularly important emails, e.g. with certain subject lines or from certain senders, if necessary.

- Schedule a few specific periods of time during your day for reading and responding to emails, and stick to that schedule religiously. Don't do any "quick checks" during the rest of the day; leave it all for your scheduled email time.

- If volume of email is a problem, try to trim it down. Remove yourself from any mailing lists or groups you don't need to be in. Set up email filters to automatically sort unimportant emails with certain subjects, senders, etc. into other folders so they don't clutter up your main inbox (and so you can mark them as read or delete them en masse easily).

- If emails are always unmanageable after returning from leave, then set up your autoresponder message to advise senders that you are out of the office and that they should either contact someone else or email you again after you return. Then when you get back, just delete everything in your inbox that came in during your leave. If it was important, someone will send it again.

- Block off a good stretch or two of time each day in your calendar as "Busy" and decline any meeting requests for those time periods. Mark yourself as "Away" during those times so that you don't receive IMs or calls; set up a polite away message or voicemail greeting advising that you are currently unavailable and will get back to the person as soon as you are free.

_Brian wrote: »

I’ve gotten a year high of 11 emails this week, 8 of those was a bunch of people back slapping over an award that was won.

In my last job I got 7-800 a week.

I like this job.

Public service?

I currently have 19k unread emails. Some of them are over 10 years old.

The sad thing is I read over 100 a day and reply to about 50 of them. The first 3-4 hours of every day are purely for reading and replying to emails. It's ****ing ridiculous.

Ridiculous amount of emails/ teams /skype going
On since WFH,
Instead of sticking the head over to a desk


Hitting about 100 mails a day

Canyon86 wrote: »

Ridiculous amount of emails/ teams /skype going
On since WFH,
Instead of sticking the head over to a desk


Hitting about 100 mails a day

Plenty of managed in multi-nationals would kill to have so few.

In one of my current jobs, when I'm "on duty" I'm responsible for answering and triaging service requests, which are delivered by email, within the hour. Get about 200-300 emails per day (includes followups, not all new issues). Some are auto-alerts but they want human eyes cast on them before filing so I cannot just use rules. The company has no appetite to move to a better system, it's not a problem they want to solve at the moment. So it keeps me employed. There are far worse jobs around.

Email usage should be declining as people get used to using Collaboration tools (e.g. Teams, Slack, JIRA etc).

Work related emails outside of normal working hours is Electronic Terrorism.

You should only use email when necessary... too many people and managers are guilty of this a... L O T Just think and email, think and email, think and email...ok it’s convenient and safe to have a paper trail but...

An example... “gents, I walked into the canteen at 14.10 and this is what I found., ( pic with half eaten food, drinks bottles and wrapping and newspaper left on the table ) is anybody willing to own up to leaving the place in such a mess, in contravention of wellness , hygiene and cleanliness policy ? “. Our canteen was used by 3 people, there was only 3 people out of 11 scheduled on lunch at 13.00-14.00... go fûckin talk to THEM !

When I and others finish break, we dump and wipe, leaving the area clean, clear and ready for the next persons to relax and enjoy the food in cleanliness and comfort.

There's 3 in mine as of yesterday evening. All read.

I get plenty emails every day. The key is to be organised and don't let it dictate you.

I have one essential report that I must review every morning and take certain actions. It takes 30 minutes max. I don't check email until I have dealt with it.

When checking emails, I delete them if not needed. File them if necessary. If not for me or need to be dealt with somebody else, then I forward them accordingly and copy the sender. Take myself out of the loop.

Any that need a reply or action will be dealt with immediately if it's a short response that won't take much time (i.e. less than 2 minutes). If not, will leave in inbox and put a flag on them according to urgency. If I can't get back to somebody in a reasonable timeframe or a response will take longer than anticipated, then I let the sender know.

Once I have checked emails, I close Outlook and don't open until next checking time (maybe 2 / 3 hours later).

On the flipside, if I need a response and don't get it, I ring the person. If they don't respond to that, I will generally proceed without their input (not always possible).

I see two people doing the same job with the same number of customers - but with vastly different inboxes. Person #1 is overflowing with hundreds unread and is always under pressure, misses deadlines, slow to reply. Person #2 has a practically empty inbox and is very reliable. All comes down to how they manage it.

PS - when sending emails, always put a relevant title / description in the subject field - makes retrieval so much easier.

beauf wrote: »

Often its about spreading the blame game.

It's called blamestorming now.

tomwaits48 wrote: »

For my boss, my direct reports and important customers, I’ll deal with those emails right away. Often by phoning and talking to them about the issue.

This works most of the time, but, nothing drives me mental as much as when I call someone, have a good conversation, and they ask at the end of the call for a quick “email” summarising the discussion. Argh.

I despise the vendors who respond to a written question with a phone call that skirts the issue and often doesn't quite answer the question: if I wanted a chat, I'd call you. If I want a considered answer which I can rely on, and put into our knowledge-sharing system for the rest of my team to see, I'll write. If you don't have the b*lls to put your info in writing, why should I trust you with whatever we're purchasing from you.