Digital Chaos Control

Category: Task Management

Inbox Zero Eliminates Overload – by Michael Neuendorff
Do you suffer from email overload?

Terrible, isn’t it? Every time you open your Inbox the email just flows in like a waterfall.

The challenges with managing email are myriad. Here are a few:
- Feeling overwhelmed before even getting started
- Losing track of an email and asking the sender to send the email again. (Now there are 2 copies in the Inbox!)
- Difficulty prioritizing
- Looking at, but not dealing with emails. This becomes an unproductive pattern.
- Email seems more like a curse than a benefit
Can you relate? I worked with many people over the years that suffer from email overload. It’s a key reason why they feel chronically disorganized and unable to focus on what really matters each day. The email just keeps coming.

Here’s my true confession: I used to be that way.

I would routinely let my Inbox balloon to about 2,500, then I’d start cleaning up email for a period, usually over a holiday break, and get back down to 50 or less. After a few years of this, I decided enough was enough and devised some strategies that would work for me.

This was more than 2 years ago. Since then I’ve never had more than 100 emails in my Inbox. As I write this I have 19 emails in my Inbox. Here are my 6 rules I follow to manage email.
1. Move everything non-essential out of your Inbox. What I mean is to have a separate email address for personal email, which includes email from your bank, insurance company, restaurants you like, etc. This puts only business-related email into your primary Inbox. Second-level business email should go into folders via Rules or into another Tab ala Gmail. I use the Gmail tabbed approach.
2. Be militant about unsubscribing to email you don’t want from Senders you no longer care about. Too many people are lazy about unsubscribing thinking, “I might like the next email I get.” (Even though they really don’t.) If you see value, keep it. If you don’t, throw it out. Simple rule: You should read all the email you get.
3. Block time out for email cleaning at least every other day. I make sure I have a few hours to mow through my Inbox every few days. I am not willing to let email pile up so I make it a priority.
4. Don’t use your Inbox as a reminder system. People leave email in their Inbox to remind them to do things. Use a Task Manager like Asana instead. Use email as a communication tool. That’s all.
5. As soon as you deal with an email, file it away. I file email like crazy all the time. As soon as I reply to someone, I file their email. After they reply, I file it again. Over and over, file, file, file. By the way, this requires that you have file folders for everything and everyone.
6. Delete email constantly. If I’m not filing it, I’m deleting it. Just as with Rule #5, refuse to let email linger.
If you’ll follow these 6 rules you’ll have a fighting chance at Inbox Zero.

The reason you want to do this is because it will lift a huge weight off your shoulders and you’ll realize the true power of email as the powerfully efficient communication and moneymaking tool that it is.

Once you’re there, vow to never go back to the way it was. Ever.

If you’d like more tips about dealing with email, get these two books: Getting Things Done by David Allen, and The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes. These books cover much more than email, but their tips on this topic were instrumental to my approach.

Michael Neuendorff is an acclaimed Business Coach and Sales Trainer. Learn more about his business at http://www.buildandbalance.com.
April 19, 2016
I never finish anythin…

If you’re using your email inbox as a task list, you’re probably seeing it get out of control. Even if you’re flagging important emails and looking at your flagged email daily, are you feeling a little worn-down with how many emails you’re seeing? Seeing a long to-do list or a stack of actionable emails can leave you feeling like throwing in the towel.

You know that you can’t give up. You need to get through them because they were important enough to flag in the first place. The root of the problem is that it takes too much of your attention and decision-making skills to look at each one and determine the action needed.

Save your email as a task

In my blog post here: How to Ingrate Email with Task Management I write about integrating your email with a task manager. If you save an email as an actual task, then you can re-write the title and add notes to help you to remember what it is that you have to do. Wouldn’t it be much easier to look at a list of actionable tasks then a list of emails with vague titles?

You still may have a to-do list that’s long, but if you focus on your top 5 every day then you can whittle down your list over time. (If you list continues to grow because of too-full days, you may also want to look at delegating and outsourcing.)

Every task is an action

One great technique for a to-do list is to make every task an action. I.e., if you have an email from David titled: “Hey Robin, can we talk soon?” you need a task that’s more like: “Contact David and schedule a discussion”.

Here’s a great article about organizing your to-do list by emotion: Sort Your To-do List By Emotion. If I take the previous example and change it to this: “Contact David and schedule a discussion (Great Sense of Accomplishment)”, I would feel more motivated to get it done.

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April 15, 2016
How to Manage Emails and Tasks
If you’re like me, you spend a good part of the day in front of a computer. I have several to-do lists, consisting of project tasks, business tasks, and personal tasks. Throughout the day, I’m also getting phone calls and emails.

The phone calls are easy because they’re immediate.

I take notes during the call, bring up my calendar for scheduling, and then fill in my intake form with the information that I’ve written down. I can then transition to my task management tool, my project management tool, or my CRM (customer relationship management) tool. If I get the call when I’m away from the office, then I will do some of this on my mobile device and the rest when I get to my computer

Some emails are easy.

If I see any emails come in from a paying client or a potential client, I will deal with that email shortly. If those come in when I’m out of the office, I’ll respond on my mobile device.

Other emails become to-dos on their own.

There may be invitations to meetings or events or lunch. There may be clients out of the office currently and whose emails I need to follow up on later. There may be business partners sending information that I’d like to read when I have time.

Every single one of those emails becomes a task in itself. But they’re not on my to-do list, and they’re not organized into my daily blocks of time that I allocate for certain tasks. There is a risk that, by using my email inbox as another task list, there are things that won’t get done.

It may be fine for you to keep emails as tasks in your inbox. You could schedule some time every day to deal with those tasks. It’s a good idea in general to block out time every day to do email anyway – to categorize emails, archive, delete or flag. You can sort your inbox so that the flagged emails are at the top, and then spend that time dealing with them.

It’s easy to get behind with these emails tasks.

You may find yourself with a list of flagged emails that just keeps growing. They’re all important, but how do you find the time to get through them? Are they all equally important?

It may be more efficient to integrate those emails instead with whatever task management system you’re using. See my blog post here about email/task integration: How to Integrate Email with Task Management.

If you’re not using a task manager, then here’s some that you can check out:
1. Outlook
If you use Outlook for email and calendar, then it may make sense to use the built-in task manager as well. The downside to this is that you can’t quit your email program to focus on your task list. You may find that other task managers fit your needs better.
1. Google Tasks
If you use Gmail and Google Calendar, then Google Tasks may make sense for you. The interface is easy to use and it functions just fine as a straight-forward task manager.
1. Apple Reminders
Apple Reminders is another good, simple task manager, for use on Apple devices only. If you don’t need collaboration, then Apple Reminders should work for you.
1. Wunderlist
This is my choice for a task manager. I have Wunderlist installed on all of my devices so that I can sync and access my to-do list wherever I am. I can create multiple lists, sub-tasks, a “starred” list, a “today” list, and I can share lists.
1. Evernote
Evernote is more of an information organization system then a task manager. But many people like to use it for their to-do lists. You can create an Evernote Notebook for your to-dos and assign reminders for them.

Email can be a distraction in your otherwise productive day. It can be stressful to see those emails tasks piling up. You’ll need a regular routine to stay on top of those email tasks, whether it’s dealing with them as them come in, flagging them for follow-up, or integrating with your task manager.

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April 12, 2016
How to Integrate Email with Task Management

Staying on top of email chaos is not easy.

Even after you’ve followed the steps to manage your email inbox (see my blog post here: 4 Steps to Becoming More Responsive ), you still need to “deal with” those emails that require a follow-up task. How do you make sure that you get those done, and that they don’t get lost in the daily shuffle?

The easiest way is to have a daily routine to review and act on those emails. If you flag the most important emails, you can sort your inbox by flag. You can then review those emails daily and then delete them or archive them as you finish your follow-ups.

However, a more efficient way is to merge your email with a task management system. Your emails will then become integrated with your daily to-do list.

If you’re an Outlook user, then you can use the built-in Outlook task manager.

Flagging an email in Outlook actually assigns a follow-up task. If your email account is a POP account, this is pretty straightforward: open the email and select a flag for Today, Tomorrow, Next Week, etc. If your email account is an IMAP account, you have only the option of a flag with no follow-up date. You’ll have to drag the email to Tasks (in your sidebar) and then assign a due date.

If you use Mac mail, you can drag an email to your Reminders list.

Click on the “i” at the right of the reminder, and then choose the day that you want to be reminded on.

If you’re a Gmail user, you can create a Google reminder from an email.

Open the email, click on “More”, and then select “Add to Tasks”. Your Tasks window will open in the bottom right-hand corner. You can then click on the arrow next to your new task to give it a due date. (If you use the Google Inbox app on your mobile device, then see my blog post here: How to Manage Your Gmail Inbox).

You can also integrate your email with dedicated task managers such as Wunderlist.

Here’s how it works with Wunderlist: when you’re running the app on your device and signed into your Wunderlist account, you can send emails to your Wunderlist Inbox by forwarding to me@wunderlist.com. Once the email is in your Wunderlist Inbox, you can give it a due date.

If you’re keeping your to-do list in Evernote, then I suggest creating an Evernote Notebook.

You could call it “My Tasks”, and then you can then forward emails into that notebook. (You find your Evernote email address by going to “Account Info”.) When you forward an email to your Evernote email address, you can specify a notebook by adding “@<notebook name>” to the subject line. For example, if you forward an email titled “Request for more information”, you would add your “My Tasks” notebook name to that title, so: “Request for more information @My Tasks”. If you’d like to tag the email, also add “#<tag>” to the subject line. You can then go to your Evernote app and assign a due date.

Many of us like to use our email inbox as a todo list. It’s possible to do this, particularly by using flags to prioritize, but it’s more efficient to have all of your to-dos in one place, including emails that you need to follow up on.

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April 7, 2016