Conquer your inbox to achieve your goals

Conquer your inbox to achieve your goals

InboxBY CHRISTOFF OOSTHUYSEN

Let’s face it, fellow entrepreneurs, “inbox floods” are real!

You might be experiencing it now, in the first weeks of the year, or it might be a regular occurrence where attending to emails takes way too much of your time, preventing you from covering priority tasks or working on your bigger business goals. Between putting out operational fires, fielding client inquiries, and navigating team communication, your inbox can become another burden of digital demands.

But fear not! There’s a path to reclaiming your sanity and maximising your productivity. It starts with transforming your inbox from a time-stealing monster into a well-oiled machine that supports your journey to entrepreneurial success.

I can share three ideas that may help you immensely in remaining productive. Consider the tips below within your own context, then decide which of the steps you’ll implement and concentrate on those first. You can always add more of the tips at a later stage, but my advice is that you start with one or two of the suggestions right now.

Here we go… 

1. Build Your Email Defences

Your email defences consist of pre-emptive steps to organise your inbox and prevent meaningless emails from overwhelming you. Here are three such steps you can take right now:

Folders: Categorise emails into folders or labels. You might prefer using the folders or labels for Client Projects, Team Discussions, Financial Updates, and Personal Messages, as examples; or you might prefer categorising into action groups for Today, This Week, This Month, and If Time. Then keep labelling like a champion, and move items to new folders if their status changes.

Fire: Declare war on junk or just “fire” your newsletter senders! You might want to ruthlessly unsubscribe from newsletters and mailing lists that no longer serve you, and create a separate folder or label for Newsletters and one for Promotions for those you still want to receive so that these emails don’t clog up your inbox.

Firewall: Start today to leverage the power of filters by setting up automation rules to banish promotional emails to the Promotions folder and save subscriptions to the Newsletters folder. You may also create priority automation, that save and highlight emails from key clients for immediate attention, or automatically reply to emails that may be parked. Automation is your best firewall possible.

2. Prioritise Prioritisation

Even when you manage to filter out promotions and newsletters from your inbox, it probably still contains a mixture of very important and urgent messages and items that are sent to you without needing any action from you. The only way to stay productive is to prioritise, and make sure prioritising emails stays your top priority!

I can share some ideas for you to use in creating your own way of knowing you are attending to the important items and relegating the less important emails for later attention:

Star: Unleash the power of the star! Reserve stars for very important items for the day that must be attended to urgently and demand attention. These high-priority emails cover things you cannot sort out right away but need urgent attention.

Subject: Train your email contacts to be clear and concise with subject lines. Start with your team so that subject lines become roadmaps, guiding you to prioritise effectively and avoid wasting time deciphering vague communications. Also, avoid redundant subject lines being used in a thread that is already covering a different topic.

Send: Emails are easy to send and even easier to forward, so do not hesitate to delegate or refer. You are not passing the buck but making sure the right person gets the message. Also, create a folder or use a label for emails you delegated or referred, so that you may follow up if it goes quiet from the person you sent it to.

3. Shave Seconds to Save Hours

Emails are already in the digital realm, so it’s ideal to make use of the digital tools available to us to save a few seconds or minutes for each reply. These moments you save may add up to many hours in a week.

Here are the final set of tips for you to consider in your plans for creating your well-oiled email machine:

Templates: Write email templates for common scenarios so that you can just paste the text, or open the template, or you may even create a text shortcut to insert such texts quickly. But more importantly, every day new and better AI apps are becoming available to help you in crafting texts, including clever and contextual replies to emails. Templates and AI reply tools may save you seconds and minutes, to allow you hours for more important tasks.

Today: Embrace the “Done Today” philosophy. For emails you can handle within a single session, ask yourself, “Can I finish this before the sun sets?” If so, tackle it immediately and send a confirmation reply. This eliminates back-and-forth exchanges and injects decisive action into your workflow.

Time: Don’t let crucial emails get lost in the digital abyss. Select a time for follow-up reminders on unanswered messages or outstanding tasks, or for replies you must get from others you delegated items to. This ensures critical tasks remain on your radar, preventing missed deadlines and ensuring smooth project execution.

Remember, conquering your inbox is not a sprint, but a marathon! It does, however, start with getting prepared… like the marathon runner taking care to select the best shoes and start an eating plan…

My advice is to experiment, adapt, and discover what techniques work best for your unique situation. Embrace technology, leverage AI tools, and personalise your communications. Decide which of the tips I provided above you can implement immediately, then concentrate on the one or two you select. You can add more later to add to your email mastery!

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©2024 Entrepreneurial Planning Institute

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