This is a guest post by one of the UK’s leading experts in digital distraction and digital detox and author of The Distraction Trap: How to Focus in a Digital World, Frances Booth. Find out more about Frances here.
Email management is something that many of us tend to ignore, or not even think about.
Despite email being such a big part of our daily working lives, and presenting such a big chance to make productivity savings, many of us just resort to a default always on mode to deal with our emails.
It can sometimes seem like all we’re doing is clearing messages, desperately trying to empty our inbox faster than the flow of new messages coming in. Or, we spend hours just wading around in our inbox, feeling overwhelmed. We know we’re spending our time unproductively, and feel like we’re fighting a losing battle.
Yet still we don’t tackle the core issue – the way we’re choosing to use email.
We’re missing a huge opportunity here. By rethinking our email management techniques, we can start to make big productivity savings.
It’s great to see that, finally, some inventive policies are starting to emerge when it comes to email use in business.
Last year German vehicle maker Daimler announced an innovative email policy where any emails sent to employees who were away on holiday were deleted.
What an interesting idea.
So, on arriving back in the office after a holiday, employees – already refreshed from taking a break – could start afresh with email too, rather than spending days clearing an email backlog. Such a policy also ensures that employees properly switch off and recharge while on holiday. This is good for productivity as well as for employee wellbeing.
Do you have a policy for dealing with email? (Photo: Wikipedia)
This is a great example of a company realising that much more can be done when it comes to email and productivity.
The question now is, what more can we do?
How else can we invent, re-invent, and come up with policies that support productivity and balance when it comes to email?
On the whole, we’ve been really slow to tackle this question within business. But now is the time – for smart companies and smart business people – to start doing something about it.
What would the ideal email policy look like for your business?
Start by thinking about these questions:
1. Have you ever thought about having an email policy other than email always on and always interrupting you?
Think about what this policy could be. Try and be as inventive as possible. Think about what would work best for you, not for the people emailing you.
2. Do you have a signature at the bottom of your email?
This is a great place to let people know, for example, that you check email twice a day. In doing so, you manage their expectations as well as your own.
3. Have you spotted any interesting examples of people who have policies for email, or who have an email signature about their email management that made you look twice?
Start collecting these examples. Use them as a template to create your own policy and signature.
Email should be a tool that is useful for life and for business, but we need to think about how we can best use it. Taking back control and creating email management policies is a smart place to start.
