Email Productivity


Tips for improving productive use of emails:

0. Use Gmail. It helps in using email most productively.

1. Use separate email IDs for work, personal life ( friends, family.. ) and online ( subscriptions, groups .. ) Set the frequency of checking in that order.

2. Use Gmail’s priority inbox feature and stop checking non-priority messages and spam.

3. If the mail is addressed to many and the issue is not urgent, wait for someone else to respond.

4. Use chat / phone. This is also a double edged sword.

5. When you are away, use a vacation responder with phone number for emergency contact. Avoids repetitive mails when you cannot respond.

6. Use filters. Archive / delete / label not so important mails.

7. Use canned responses for regular template messages you send to queries.

8. Go away from computer and access your mails through a basic cell phone with GPRS connection. This experience will teach you some good lessons like:

* Not all mails need to be opened.

* Not all mails need to be replied.

* Not all mails need to be replied at once.

* Short, to the point responses are OK.

9. Go completely offline for few days. This experience will teach you some good lessons like:

* Personal and urgent messages will always reach you through phone calls.

* We started using email only a decade back and the sky won’t fall if we don’t check mail every hour 🙂

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