Jobs: 10 ways to manage e-mail

By Laura Raines

For the AJC

As publisher of Atlanta Parent Magazine, Liz Smith is inundated with e-mail and real mail every day.

“So much of it is irrelevant to what we do, but you have to open it to find out,” she said. “Just dealing with the mail here could be a full-time job. At one time I had 12,000 e-mails in my inbox. Fortunately, my staff saw I needed help.”

They gave her a gift certificate to work with Leslie Walden, founder and partner of It’s Time to Get Organized LLC, an Atlanta-based organization and time management company. Walden helped her tame the beast.

“I’ve learned to make a decision about something the first time I open it and to move it to an appropriate folder or delete it,” Smith said. “When I hear that ding, I don’t stop what I’m doing now. I answer e-mail on a schedule that makes sense. Ideally, that’s about three times a day.”

Smith said she feels less stress now that she has a system and has learned more sophisticated ways to use the technology.

“Feeling like you’re behind even before you start is a hard way to begin your day,” she said.

Smith isn’t the only one with an avalanche of messages. According to a international workplace productivity survey commissioned this year by LexisNexis, 59 percent of international white-collar workers say the amount of information they have to manage has increased since the economic downturn. Sixty-two percent stated that the quality of their work had suffered because they can’t sort through it fast enough. About six in 10 U.S. workers find the constant flow of e-mail distracting.

There are ways to restore e-mail as the effective tool it was meant to be. Here are 10 things to remember:

1.) “E-mail is king in the business world, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon,” said Peggy Duncan, a personal productivity expert and author of “Conquer Email Overload with Better Habits, Etiquette, and Outlook 2007.” She teaches an Outlook class almost every Tuesday at her Digital Breakthroughs Institute.

“E-mail eliminates phone tag, reaches volumes of people quickly, establishes a paper trail -- without the paper -- and connects with your calendar, tasks, contacts and notes. I don’t see social media taking the place of all that.”

2.) “Remember that business e-mail is business. It will reflect on you and your company if not done well,” said Walden of It's Time to Get Organized. “Reread e-mail before hitting send. Use spell-check, pay attention to grammar, tone and punctuation.”

3.) “E-mail can be a huge time-sucker, and it can run your life -- if you let it,” Smith said. Walden said to cut down on the messages you send and receive, clarify with your boss and co-workers when it’s appropriate to use it. “Most of the time a daily or weekly status report can summarize recent decisions and actions and save hundreds of e-mail messages,” she said. Only "cc" or forward information to people who need it.

4.) “Always consider the recipient before replying,” said Travis Bradberry, author of “Emotional Intelligence 2.0” and co-founder of TalentSmart, a global consulting firm. “We respond to e-mails so automatically and we’re so caught up in our own needs that we just let words fly,” Bradberry said. “If you’d take a moment to consider how it will be perceived, you’d spend a lot less time cleaning up miscommunication messes later.” Bradberry suggests using Abraham Lincoln’s rule of etiquette. When subordinates and rivals frustrated him, he wrote them scathing letters but never sent them. He filed them in his desk drawer instead. The next day he would send a more tempered response, Bradberry said.

5.) Clean out your inbox. “Create a folder system with names that make sense to you. An inbox is not your to-do list, your database, your address book or your calendar. You have software tools to do all that,” Duncan said. “I once had a client with 26,000 e-mails in his inbox. He spent his day scrolling. Keep your inbox to one screen. Place everything in logical folders and things won’t fall through the cracks.”

6.) “Make your communication more effective by creating a strong subject line,” Walden said. “Keep your message short and to the point. Bullet points and spaces between paragraphs make text easier to follow. Make action requests clear and prominent to eliminate excuses from co-workers, like ‘I didn’t know when you needed it.’ ”

7.) “Know when to take a conversation offline,” Bradberry said. “Managing online relationships is tough, since we’re programmed to communicate face to face. If you find yourself in a significant, lengthy or heated text-messaging battle, pull the plug and call or meet the person.”

It can save time and improve working relationships.

8.) “Don’t just upgrade your software: learn how to use it,” Duncan said. “Training is the first thing to go when the economy dips, but learning how to use all the tools of your technology systems will help you work faster and better.”

9.) “Make your emotions clear,” Bradberry said. “Emoticons have a mixed reputation in the workplace, but if used sparingly, they can be an effective way of showing your intent.

“Words on a page can’t show emotional tone. Will your boss know that you’re being ironic or lighthearted? A wink [ ] or a smiley face [ ] could make it clear.”

10.) Set limits. According to John Freeman’s “The Tyranny of E-mail: The Four-Thousand-Year Journey to Your Inbox,” we spend 40 percent of our day checking e-mail.

Turn off the auto alert and decide when it makes sense for you to check it. Reply to messages requiring a longer answer at one time. Don’t send or receive business e-mails after office hours unless it’s a critical negotiation or emergency. Establish a little work/life balance.