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Book Carole "Your presentation was intelligent, interactive and energetic – just what we needed as a closing keynote to this Forum"
Purva Hassomal, Leaders of Abu Dhabi, Family Business Forum Director
World Authority on Executive Stress, Carole Spiers
explains the effect of email on Time Management
Email has had the effect of shunting us into a permanent emergency-crisis atmosphere that is now regarded as the norm. You spend most of the day poised on high alert, ready to put out sudden 'brush fires' - in other words, being handled by your email, rather than you controlling it.
You probably know the difference between two kinds of working time - the constructive kind where you control the operation, and the disruptive kind where you are forced to break-off and respond to interruptions. Anyone who has studied Time Management would immediately identify email as a major cause of the second example.
It means there is no such thing as a solid hour - only sixty lots of one-minute panics, liable to keep the mind in an entirely unnatural mode of high alert.
Keeping your Inbox manageable
One solution is to switch-off that 'New email' alert which is hard to resist. It might be anything. Keeping it on is similar to never leaving home in case an important letter arrives and you really should not distort your entire life for email. Try just checking your emails every couple of hours, for the next week or two, and see how many real emergencies you have missed.
Next, you need some basic drills for keeping your Inbox manageable. Delete irrelevant messages. File others for later reference. Use the Subject Line to distinguish FYI from RES. Paste-down elements which don't strictly need an attached file, or compress larger ones.
Finally, try to keep your whole department email-savvy. Setting up an archive ... Integrating emails with calendars ... Regularly report spam ... All put together, you'll find these will speed and streamline the conduct of daily business. You may even provide external training courses in email management, or internal seminars with a consultant trainer or perhaps one of your own staff may have the necessary skills to provide support within the department.
As well as improving performance, these interventions will also put you confidently in command of your email programme, and eliminate unnecessary worry and unnecessary pressure.
Email routines - Summary
- Resist the temptation to treat that 'New Email' alert as a crisis
- Acquire the simple drills that keep your Inbox manageable
- Email management should be treated as formal business training
Another key insight from Carole Spiers, World Authority on Executive Stress,
Motivational Speaker and BBC Broadcaster.
