The New York Times writes in the article “Struggling to Evade the E-Mail Tsunami” how email has become the bane of many professional lives. They quote several entrepreneurs (Mike Arrington of TechCrunch, Mark Cuban Owner of the Dallas Mavericks) and how they struggle with email overload. They haven’t found a solution because they are constantly declaring “email bankruptcy” and it would be interesting to find out more about how they are actually using their email.

Here are my thoughts on how you can get back in control of your inbox are:

STEP #1

Most important is to change your mindset that your email inbox is a storage place for things you have to do in the future. You don’t manage your tasks with your inbox, you have a to do list or other tools for that. Your inbox is your communication channel and therefore should be empty whenever you finished processing.

STEP #2

Unsubscribe from all email newsletters that you have (if you still need them, then setup a rule that automatically redirects them into one folder).

STEP #3

If you know that you receive email from certain senders that you want to keep but that you don’t want to deal with every day because you don’t have to act on it, then just setup  another rule and redirect these mails into a special folder in your email program and read them some time in the future. It is important that these emails don’t fill up your inbox.

After you have set up these automatic rules you can still decide what workflow you want to adapt to deal with the other emails.

Delegation

Delegate the processing of the emails and focus on the important ones. This is especially helpful when your emails come from a variety of senders and you can’t judge automatically if this email requires your attention or not. You need to hire an assistant who will screen your emails and after a few days or weeks of alignment you will be a perfect team.

Batch Processing

This strategy limits your email activity to two, maybe three email sessions a day when you are processing all your email. In this process you move all the email that is relevant to a separate folder, and delete all the other mails that don’t require action. You have to stick to batch processing and have to ensure that you don’t leave the program open just to see if there is any new email in your inbox. If you are so curious about your latest mails, then switch to continuous processing with a mobile device but don’t do it at your desk because this is where you should actually work.

Continuous Processing

Continuous processing is about processing and filtering your emails by yourself converting idle time during the day into working time to process your emails. Of course, this can not be done while you are working at your desk or while having an important meeting. But it can be done while you are waiting for a meeting to begin, for the coffee machine to finish or for the elevator to arrive. Of course this requires your mobile phone to be able to read your emails and to be able to delete emails also from your mail server, so that you just have to delete them once. This can be done with a BlackBerry and by adapting this email workflow your email problem should be solved.

These are the steps that help me to become more productive. I am following the continuous processing for all my emails and with my BlackBerry I can ensure that I stay above the flood of emails arriving in my inbox every day.