in one way or another we are all slaves
to email whether that be in our home
life or at work which is why any way to
improve our productivity when using
email and to regain control is essential
I've recently been using Merlin man's
inbox zero which has existed for a few
years now and is very well recommended
in the digital marketing community
although realistically it works with any
email scenario at the heart of it it's
about reducing your reliance on email so
instead of constantly checking your
email every day throughout the day you
would do it every two hours or maybe
less than that Merlin suggests in one of
his blog post that you should do it as
often as you urinate so that's one
option and when you check your emails
the idea is that you allocate a block of
time and you go through them there and
then and perform one of these five
actions which I'll get to in a minute
and then you close your email and you
get on with some real work and I've in
the last month that I've tried it have
found it really useful and it has
improved my productivity and the way
I've been looking at it is that when you
get post at home you go to the letterbox
you pick it up you deal with it you
either throw stuff away or you deal with
stuff that you need to deal with or you
put it on a pile to deal with later
whereas the typical approach to email is
that you're constantly checking the
letterbox you're doing stuff you're
putting stuff here you're leaving like
various piles that don't make any
logistical sense and this way is a lot
simpler by comparing it to the letterbox
approach that we used usually use so
let's take a look at these five
different methods that Merlin suggests
the first is to delete anything that's
non-essential or to archive things that
needed to be read once but then can be
for a way somewhere else for when you
need them and that's the simplest option
really and that helps cut down on a lot
clutter the next is to delegate so you
probably already delegate email tasks to
other people but what I do with this is
I move things into
folder called waiting on someone when I
delegated a task that way all the emails
that I don't immediately have to deal
with or where I'm waiting on someone
else don't clog up my mind from emails
that I need to action that are important
and you can take that one step further
we have a CRM system and put the tasks
in there and then track it from start to
finish in which case you don't even need
the waiting on or delegated folder
because you can track it in there next
we've got response so if any email could
be responded to in less than two minutes
or if you can complete the task and
respond to the email in a very short
time you should do it there and then as
part of that email time
don't let lots of little tasks pile up
if you can get those small tasks out the
way it really helps clear your mindset
for important stuff later next we've got
defer so those are tasks that aren't
needed to be done right now and that's
really helpful because when you scan
through your email you can at a glance
know that the folder that's called defer
is tasks that you need to do later and
this little folder which is called to do
are the tasks that you need to do right
now or in the immediate future it's an
excellent way to have visibility of
what's really mission-critical
and what's actually a nice to do
something you would like to reply to but
which is going to take more time than
you have right now it's important that
none of these folders get too big at any
one time if you have got too many things
in the to-do folder then clearly you
need to speak to your manager and
suggest that these are all the things
you've got to do or look at over time
saving techniques
likewise if you've got too many deferred
tasks you may need to consider pulling
some of them forward to do sooner or if
they're not important at all then simply
canceling those tasks and moving on to
more important projects it's all about
time allocation and although this won't
do any of the work for you it only
requires a really small time investment
on your part and the achievement of
being able to close your email and focus
on a task
without the annoying pop-up coming up
every five seconds is fantastic and
let's face it if you were in a meeting
or you had a day off
you wouldn't be checking your email all
day long during those times and the
world doesn't end during those times Eva
so although the concepts of closing your
email for long periods of time may seem
quite scary it is achievable especially
if you let your team around you know
that if they need to reach you urgently
as you pick up the phone and for
everything else there's email as I say
I've been using this for a month now and
it's really helped me to regain control
of my email inbox zero isn't about just
grabbing all your emails and shoving
them in folders you do still need to pay
attention but if you do it right it can
really help change the way you use email
thanks for watching and for more
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