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E-mails can be overwhelming, but they don’t always have to be.

Okay. Fun with emails is fun with emails, and we all joke about the spam – you know the Viagra, the “send me money and I send you millions’, etc – but lots of times they get us all a bit crazy, or if we are lucky, the e-mails giving us work information and contacts overwhelm us but are welcomed.

In my business, email is 90 percent of the communication I have with clients and potential clients, and organizing my email is important as a backup of sorts of their important information.

Accordingly, I have mastered a method where I never have more than 25 emails at one time, and it never takes me more than ten minutes four times a day to keep up with the nonessential, non urgent, family oriented, friendly “non-spam spam’.

I do check my e-mail throughout the day, all day, every day for my professional, business email.  I have to. I have clients who send me work constantly and consistently all day every day, and they all need immediate attention, whether I find the subject important or not.  Every email I receive is usually responded to within 15 minute without interrupting or interfering with my day-to-day business chores.  Because, to me, email is a day-to-day business chore.

Have you ever checked your email at night and seen that “can you do this by end of day’ and missed the opportunity for a business project or professional connection?

The method I have developed for myself has helped others I have worked with in the past keep up with their professional and personal email and  still get “everyday’ work done on time and professionally.

I chuckle sometimes when I hear people say they have hundreds of emails to sort through when they wake up or even worse, when they are trying to wind down for the evening. They find themselves up for hours sorting and responding to the email making their day longer than it should be.

It wasn’t easy for me to figure it all out, but now I go to bed with an empty email box and wake up and within 20 minutes of opening email, my in-box is empty, every email responded to, sorted, saved or deleted. And my deleted items is empty and most often, my sent folder is empty.

It drives me crazy when others ask me to sort and organize their email and everything they have ever done is sitting in sent or deleted items folders.

How do you ever find anything?

Yes, I get about 500 emails a day to just one email address and I have 7 I use daily for both personal and professional business. No, I do not just delete them, I read every one and sort accordingly.

It is not that difficult.  It does take some discipline and some great organizational skills that for some must be learned – the same skills we use every day to organize the other aspects of our life.  I give email the same ‘respect’ I give my clients work, and in the end, it respects me back.

I call it ADHD OCD email procedures. 

I think of it as being like an exercise. You have to want to really commit, but once the routine is established, it is just that routine. And when you think about it, your email is just as important as your weight, your health, your clients, and your projects. So why treat it as a secondhand, unwanted, terrible thing?

Of course it can be a headache, more like a migraine, if you let it go and put it off, or don’t use the email programs in the best way possible.  No one ever teaches us how to do anything but set up to receive, read and delete.  That is what the problem is.  We began using this great tool thinking it is just a means of receiving/sending electronically what we would have mailed by way of snail mail.

It is so much more than that. It is a social networking tool that allows us that in, that even the best social networks sometimes cannot give – but they do allow you to inform others of your email address.  So what would they be without email?

And think about this…the better you are with handling your email, the more likely your email will be read and handled quicker by others when they receive it. 

It’s all in the organization.

I have organized many client’s email and once organized they have stated it is easy to keep up. When they slip up due to vacation or other personal or professional dramas, they call me in and I clean it up again. I don’t even have to be involved in they day-to-day operations of the business to know how to do it, the clients just have to know their day-to-day business – how easy is that?

I consider e-mail an important part of any business.

It is the first social network ever developed. It is also the first electronic filing system, in my opinion, and a great backup system to some pretty important information.

If you don’t keep it organized, you can and will miss something.

I am working on putting my personal system down step by step.  It is a bit hard for me to do because every person’s email is in need of personalized organization, and well, as you can tell by the name of my blog, I have kind of random thoughts and not as great a writer as many of my clients, but as a self-proclaimed organizational freak, I will get it done and be sure to post.

If you are interested in having a bit of electronic organization done – or your office organized specifically for you – let me know. I enjoy a challenge that at the end of the task, you see a difference not just in the space but on the face of the client.

How do you handle your email?

www.clktranscription.com

When is the right time to check and respond to e-mail?

Having a hectic morning, hectic afternoon, hectic day all around is something we all have – if not every day, at least more often than we would like.  Just getting into work for some is the hard part and then sorting through the priorities of the day’s load, and getting the momentum to get into them and complete them can be daunting.  Add arranging our time to allow for those items that always pop up and interrupts our day – and well, you have all the makings for a monster work environment.

Another thing most, if not all of us have is the dreaded e-mail in box.  Knowing it is probably overloaded makes some wait for the day to get rolling to tackle it.  Some do it first thing in the morning, and some wait for the end of the day.  Some check it and respond right away, while others will check their e-mail and hold off on a response until another time – some not at all.  Many never ever think about organizing their e-mail the same the organize other files either electronically stored or around their office.

When is the right time to check your e-mail and respond?

In the past I have worked for companies that told us when we should check it and when we should respond and what we should do with the remnants – do we save them, do we sort them, once responded to, do we delete them?

I personally know people who have every last e-mail ever received sitting in their e-mail inbox, every sent held in their sent file and never have they thought of deleting their deleted folder.

Here is my personal theory (routine) on the matter.

First thing in the morning, the very first task I have is to read all my e-mails.  I respond to each one that have an easy response, delete junk mail (more on this later) and those that need more thought are held.

Any e-mail responded to is deleted.  If I need to worry about what I said, or the other party said, I will move it from the sent folder to a folder named for that person or organization.  If it is an e-mail with information about my company I place it in a folder named for my company.  For example – Staples coupons or discounts, accountant e-mails, supply order receipts, etc.

Those items that needed more attention, now get my attention,.  I research and respond, and again, moving the sent file from the sent folder (which has the original e-mail attached) to the proper folder if necessary and the original e-mail is deleted.

Any e-mail sent that is not moved to a folder is deleted.  Then here we go, what many people dread – I empty the deleted items folder.  I have had this system for so long that I have become accustomed to moving and sorting, and by the time I have responded and moved, there is nothing in my in box, nothing in my sent folder, and only those items I absolutely don’t need are left in the deleted items folder – so it is safe to say YES, DELETE ALL ITEMS.

Throughout the day, as an e-mail arrives, I open and respond immediately – as immediately as I can but within the hour at the very latest.  Handling those e-mails the same way.  It is nice to know at the end of the day, before I shut down my computer for the evening, that all my e-mail is read, responded to, sorted and yes, the inbox, sent and deleted items folder is empty.  Of course, once every few months I sort through the individual folders I have set up for each of my clients and other items and delete the items no longer needed – old receipts, questions posed and now obsolete, etc.

Someone once told me I should never answer an e-mail immediately because it makes me look needy.  Like I have nothing else to do.  Well here is my answer to that – Are you nuts?

My clients have deadlines.  I have deadlines.  If I waste time not checking my e-mails I may have already blown the deadline for myself and my clients.  Being able to meet the deadlines of my clients is a big part of CLK Transcription’s performance model.

E-mails that come from solicitors with offers, if I don’t check my e-mail before I order, I may miss the offer forever.

In this day and age, e-mail is like instant communication for me.  It is the same as answering my phone.  I have e-mail on my Blackberry for those times I may need to be away from my computer more than a moment or two.

Does it interfere with my work.  Hardly.  Does it cramp my personal time?  Hardly.  It is routine and a routine that works for me.  I have never had anyone say – why didn’t you return my e-mail?  I also have never had anyone tell me – you blew my TAT.

So, when it is a good time to check and respond to e-mails?  I think it depends on your routine, your workflow, and your responsibilities.  But one thing is for sure – organizing is important, and responding is a must.

Otherwise, you never know what you are missing, or what you may have missed.