Has email made your work life easier or harder?

I found the latter to be more true after temporarily earning the responsibilities of three different peers when they left the employ of our team.  After each person (at different points in time) left our team for other opportunities, I was asked to handle some of the critical day-to-day functions until replacements were hired.  To do this, I took over their email accounts.

And in all three cases, what I found were disasters.  I found hundreds of unread emails, of those read, none of the important ones were filed, and of those unessential ones, they still resided in the inbox--opened by left to clutter the screen.

You too may have found this at your own place of work.  Maybe this scenario represents your work email practice.

Part of the problem is the ease with which everyone can be copied on any email--which means it is easy to get inundated.  To counter this, a few simple practices can help reduce some of this problem, according to Darren Hardy, publisher of Success magazine (Chicago Tribune, April 26, 2008).

The biggest suggestion he makes is to create files within your email application, and to move critical emails there once you have read (or acted) on its contents.  He further suggests to delete all non-essential emails from your inbox.  Keep it as clean as possible.

If you don't know what to do with an email, create a file called "Pending."  If after 60 days you don't need that email, automatically delete it out of the pending folder.

Other suggestions for regaining control over email include: turning off automatic news alerts and setting set times to review and respond to email (maybe 8 am, 11 am, 1 pm and 3 pm) so that your day does not become a jumbled mess of interruptions.

For other suggestions, watch for our third book, Retaining Success, due out this Fall.