When you think about the fact that email has become mission-critical to our professional lives, isn’t it a bit odd that we can work week after week, month after month without paying attention to maintaining our email systems properly? Yet, to our detriment, many of us do just that – and thereby aggravate our email woes. (It’s akin to an airline saying that because they only make money when their planes are flying, they’re not going to spend time on maintenance.)
Obviously, email and information overload is a huge challenge, and there are many ways to get at the problem. But here’s one truth:
Whether it’s daily or weekly, you need to make email maintenance a regular part of your practice management routine.
Here are few actions you can take to make your email more manageable.
1. Rather than just deleting your junk mail, right-click it to “Add Sender to Blocked Sender’s List.” The more you use this option, the smarter your built-in spam filter will become. And of course you won’t get any more junk from that sender. NOTE: For pure junk mail/spam, this is better than “unsubscribing” using the link at the bottom of the message because these “unsubscribe” links are often nothing more than a ruse to confirm that your address is valid; by clicking it you wind up getting more junk.
2. Unsubscribe from legitimate information providers whose material you don’t read regularly. Beware of the impulse to want to keep the subscription because you might miss something important in the future. If you’re not reading it regularly now, you’re not going to read it regularly in the future, so let it go. If you really need to find something in the future, just look for it on the web. It’s a fallacy to think that the “loss” of a potentially valuable email in the future is worth the cost of the perpetual information overload such thinking creates.
3. Use rules to automatically route email into subfolders within your main Inbox by category of sender. At a minimum, you should have a rule to route email from staff/in-house colleagues; clients; and newsletters/bar associations. (Hint: search YouTube for “Outlook Rules” to learn how.)
4. Consider setting up a second or third email address through Gmail and using that address for your current and future subscriptions and other non-essential email.
Making email maintenance a regular part of your practice management routine will pay off in reduced distraction, more efficient searching of your email, improved productivity and more effective overall time management. Want to try something radical — and powerful? Schedule a recurring 15 or 30 minute event weekly for this task. Early Friday or Saturday morning, or Sunday evening works well for many folks.
