The Email Problem – Stop Wasting Your Time by Ryan Eliason

What if I could show you a way to shave 15 minutes per day off of the time you spend on your email? Would this make a difference in your life?

Saving you 15 minutes per day would free up more than 2,225 hours over the course of the next 25 years. That’s equivalent to 285 work days (2,225 hours divided by a typical 8 hour work day = 285 days). That’s more days than most people work in a whole year!

What could you accomplish with an extra year of work? Would that be worth spending 15 minutes to learn the system I developed for processing your email?

If you’re like most people, you have challenges with your email. Perhaps your in-box is always backed up. It may be so backed up that you would be embarrassed to tell someone just how many messages are in there.

Many of my clients (before they learned my system) had a backlog of several hundred messages in their in-box. This caused them to waste time sorting through their messy in-box searching for messages which needed their attention.

But the main problem I find with my clients is that they simply spend too much time on their email. I teach my clients to be MORE PROACTIVE and LESS REACTIVE. This helps them to be more efficient, effective, and successful in their work and personal lives.

Email provides a huge temptation to be in a reactive mode. You might have majorly important, even time sensitive goals on your plate, yet you’re still taking time away from those goals to read email messages about the most irrelevant things imaginable, and sometimes even taking time to respond to those messages!

Many people, in an attempt to escape the distraction caused by their email, choose to bury their heads in the sand by not processing their email for days, leading to a massive backlog that leaves them overwhelmed with no hope of ever fully catching up.

My system is designed to solve all of these problems. So let’s get down to it.

RYAN’S HANDY DANDY EMAIL SYSTEM

One of the best things about my system is that it’s VERY SIMPLE. This makes it easy to learn and implement. However, you probably have years of bad email habits that will need changing and old habits die hard.

It’s going to take a really strong commitment and some discipline to create the new habits, but once they’re established, it will be easy and natural.

Step 1: Create two new folders named “*URGENT” and “*NOT URGENT”. Put the “*” in the beginning of the folder name so that it will sort to the top of your list of folders. You could also us an underscore “_” or another character for this purpose.

Step 2: Create folders for saving emails that you might need later. If you already have these folders, you might need to create some new ones, or rename and reorganize the ones you have so they make more sense.

Step 3: Learn to use the filter system in your email program and set up as many filters as possible for messages that you don’t need to see right away when they arrive.

For example, if you are on any email discussion lists, where you get several messages per day or per week, make a filter that automatically sorts all of those messages into one of your mail folders. This way they will never show up in your in-box and they will be neatly organized into folders.

Step 4: Make sure you have a good spam filter in place. Everyone receives a lot of spam these days, but having a good spam filter will get rid of the majority of it.

Step 5: Learn my system for processing your in-box. You can use this process to empty your in-box very quickly, even if it has hundreds of messages in it. Have your messages sorted from newest to oldest and process the newest ones first.

This way, if there is a discussion involving several messages, you won’t respond to an older message, only to later find that your response was not relevant to the current stage of the discussion.

Process your messages in the order they have been sorted – one at a time. Don’t try to skip around your in-box in an attempt to process the more important or urgent emails first. That was the old way of doing things.

Trust me, you will be much more efficient if you just go through them in the order they are sitting there in your in-box (don’t skip around!). Your goal at this stage of processing your in-box is to get it to empty and to sort your messages quickly and efficiently into folders for dealing with later. At a second stage you will be actually responding to the important messages.

Don’t open any messages that you don’t need to in order to decide what to do with them. Try to make the decision based on the Sender and the Subject. If you have to open the message then scan it as quickly as possible in order to make the decision on what to do with it.

I’m not crazy about those “preview windows” because they provide a temptation to read emails that you’re not actually ready to deal with yet. You might want to try turning your preview window off, although this is not a critical part of my system.

Here are the 4 options for what to do with each message. You might want to post these next to your computer while you’re learning the system and establishing new habits.

Delete It: The delete key should become your new best friend. Take joy in each message that you delete because it’s just not important enough to receive your attention. Think of all the time you’re freeing up for other things. Delete, delete, delete. Your goal should be to delete as many as possible.

File It: If you think you may never need to read it or do anything with it, but you might need it later for some reason, then save it in one of your folders. However, don’t put it in your *URGENT or *NOT URGENT folders – these have a different purpose. You will occasionally need to make a new folder for saving your messages in an organized fashion.

Less Than 2 Minutes – Do It: If it is something you want to read, or something you want to read+reply to, or something you want to forward, and you can do it in less than 2-minutes, then do it right then. Then either delete or file the message immediately to get it out of your in-box. If it’s going to take more than 2 minutes, DON’T DO IT, instead do the following:

URGENT or NOT URGENT Boxes: If the messages needs reading, replying, or forwarding, and you estimate that it will take more than 2-minutes, move it to either your URGENT box or your NOT URGENT box.

The URGENT box should be for messages that need action within the next 24-48 hours and the NOT URGENT box is for the rest. Both of these boxes are for important messages only! If something is not important, perhaps you shouldn’t be wasting your time on it.

Perhaps it should be deleted or saved in one of your folders (other than the URGENT and NOT URGENT boxes) in case you need it later. However, if you have a hard time breaking your habit of responding to unimportant messages, then you might want to create a third mail box called “*NOT IMPORTANT”.

Step 6: Use the above system to process your in-box to empty once or twice per day. It will be easier if you stay on top of it daily. You should be able to do it in less than 15 minutes per day if you’re really following the system and not getting caught in the temptation to respond to messages that take more than 2 minutes.

If you fall behind, which will happen from time to time, don’t panic or drop the system all together, instead, use the system to get caught up. You should be able to process a very backed up in-box with hundreds of messages very quickly. You will get faster as you practice using this new method.

Step 7: Schedule one or two times per day to go through your URGENT and NOT URGENT boxes and read, reply to, and forward messages. Aim to get these boxes to empty. Do the URGENT box first, then move onto the NOT URGENT box.

On days that you have very little time, don’t bother with the NOT URGENT box. If these boxes start to get backed up, schedule a more substantial amount of time to process them and get caught up.

Step 8: Learn to choose powerfully. This system doesn’t leave room for you to be indecisive – especially when you are processing your in-box. In the past, when you weren’t sure of what to do with a message, you probably just left it in your in-box. You’ll need to break that habit.

When you process your in-box and your URGENT and NOT URGENT boxes, make it your goal to choose powerfully what to do with each message – just decide, take action and don’t waste time.

Step 9: Break reactive habits. For the sake of being more proactive and less reactive in your life, I suggest that you turn off any “you’ve got mail” type reminders.

During the day, when you go to your email program in order to compose a message to someone, resist the temptation to read your email while you’re at it. Instead, process your mail at the times you have scheduled for that purpose.

Doing your email in blocks of scheduled time will help you to process your email more efficiently and intelligently, and it will help you to stay focused on all the other important tasks you’re working on without getting distracted by your email on a regular basis.

You might want to make some exceptions. For example, if someone emails you about an appointment later that day, you might want to read that email right away to determine if any action is needed before the appointment. However, make these types of “read right away” emails the rare exception and not the norm.

Step 10: Maintain your system. About once per month, make the effort to unsubscribe from any lists that are sending you mail that isn’t worth your attention any longer. Create any filters that would be helpful.

Go through and delete any saved mail folders that aren’t relevant any longer. Go through your NOT URGENT box if it has been backed up for a while and process it to empty. Examine your system and think about how it could be improved, etc.

Bonus Step: Now, take all the time you’re saving and do something meaningful with it! Spend it on the 20% of the actions that are going to get 80% of the results.

If you like my email system, you will probably love the book, “Getting Things Done, The Art of Stress Free Productivity“ by David Allen. I have most of my clients read this book. You can get the book through my recommended books page.

by Ryan Eliason

Ryan Eliason has been a professional, full-time Life and Business Coach since 2003, successfully supporting hundreds of clients to produce extraordinary results in their businesses and personal lives. An entrepreneur since a young age, Ryan has founded several successful businesses and a non-profit.

He developed his unique approach through 15 years of business consulting, designing and leading workshops, and working with both coaching and therapy clients. He received his formal training with the renowned Coaches Training Institute in San Rafael, California. He is also a certified Master Hypnotist, massage therapist, polarity therapist, and Transformational Therapist through the Heartwood Institute.

Ryan publishes a popular FREE monthly eLetter, ShortCuts To Success, with strategies to get everything you want in business and in life, quicker and with less effort. You can learn more about Ryan and sign up for his eLetter at: http://www.ryaneliason.com

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