How to win the battle of the inbox

Published December 13, 2009

When the post office delivers a bunch of bills you do not intend to pay right away and magazines you do not intend to read immediately, do you cram them back in the mailbox?

Not likely. But that’s essentially what folks do, in the digital world, by allowing hundreds of e-mails to pile up in their inboxes to be dealt with at some later point that never seems to come. Productivity plummets when people stop what they’re doing to check for new e-mails.

“E-mail has become the interrupter of all time,” says Marsha Egan, author of “Inbox Detox and the Habit of E-mail Excellence” (Acanthus Publishing, 2008).

Studies have shown that checking e-mail can account for several hours of lost productivity each workweek – and that’s not even counting the time spent reading and responding to messages. Studies cited in Egan’s book looked at how much time it took people to get “back in the zone” after pausing to check e-mail.

Reclaiming those lost hours requires a radical change in habits. The ideal inbox is an empty inbox. It is not a place where you store messages to remind yourself to perform tasks, says Egan, an executive coach based in Reading, Pa.

Use preference settings to turn off alerts that go off every time a new message pops up. Resolve to check e-mail only at certain times of the day. Many e-mail programs allow users to set a delivery schedule so that incoming messages are stored on the server and will only pop up in your mailbox at set intervals – for example, every 60 or 90 minutes.

Egan says that unless they’re in some sort of breaking-news business, most people can check e-mail five times a day and still meet the needs of customers and co-workers – when they arrive at work, mid-morning, after lunch, mid-afternoon and at the end of the workday. Resist the urge to monitor e-mail nonstop as you “multitask” on other projects. You’ll see quality and efficiency improvements in your work if your attention is not divided, Egan says.

Let people know you will be checking e-mail once every two hours, so if they have something urgent, they should call or stop by.

Your goal each time you check your inbox is to empty it. Apply Egan’s two-minute rule: If an e-mail can be dealt with in two minutes or less, take care of it immediately even if it’s low-priority so you don’t “junk up” your inbox. Sort into folders any e-mail that you don’t immediately trash or handle.

Create “Action A” (high priority) and “Action B” (lower priority) folders in your e-mail program, and a Reference folder for messages that do not require action but contain information you might need later.

Whatever system you have in place to keep track of your work and deadlines will also be used to remind you to complete the work in your action folders.

Once you get your own e-mail under control, you may want to employ some tips to make sure the messages you send to others receive prompt attention.

Timing makes a difference. Let’s say it is 6 p.m. and you check e-mail one last time. Reply to each e-mail, but instead of hitting “send,” save your responses as drafts and send them first thing in the morning, says Ann Marie Sabath, president of the New York-based business protocol firm At Ease Inc. “The reason is the majority of people have their messages arranged in descending order – in other words, the most recent message received is listed first” and therefore is likely to be read soonest, she says.

Keep your e-mails concise, with the main point, assignment or request within the first two lines of the message. Most e-mail readers are skimmers, Egan says, so you don’t want to bury your request. Summarize the main point and put it in the subject line. Specific subject lines capture people’s attention and spur them to action. For example, “Prepare PowerPoint presentation for staff meeting” might get clicked on and read sooner than “Staff meeting.”

Don’t combine two unrelated requests or topics in one e-mail. While it’s true that you don’t want to clutter someone’s inbox, covering one subject per e-mail makes it easier for the recipient to sort and deal with your messages.

- Written By Dawn Klingensmith