by Roger G. Best

O.K., let’s be honest here… Is your relationship with the messages in your life a bit sloppy? Do look at the messages you receive as some sort of a virtual hug that requires a pass-back?  Do you keep emails in your inbox for weeks (possibly months) even though you know in your deep down in your “knower” that the likelihood of you ever getting back to it are roughly equivalent a July snow storm in Houston, TX?  If you had to answer “yes” to any of these questions, we’ve still got some work to do… Maybe, an attitude adjustment would be in order.  I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating.  Delete, delete, delete. (more…)

By Roger G. Best

I haven’t said much thus far about creating filters (aka, rules) and scripts to automate some of your email handling… there’s a reason.  First, these rules can be helpful in some cases.  I have certain messages that come to me every day.  I know these messages are going to come into my inbox and I also know that they are not critical (in other words, they will not require my immediate/near immediate attention).  I have created rules to move those items into special folders.  I, personally, have about 8 such folders to contain the various messages until I’m ready to address them. (more…)

For those of you who have had the opportunity to see (one or more times, more if you’re like me) Cool Hand Luke, you may recall these classic words.  “Yeah, well, sometimes nothin’ can be a real cool hand.”  We’re going to look as some of those “cool hand” options here. (more…)

Handling Longer Than Two-Minute Emails, Part 1

Now we’re getting to where the rubber meets the road. There simply are messages that you can’t do the “hit and run” with… they require a little more. These are the messages that tend to drag us down. There are a couple of broad categories of messages that fall into this are. Messages that, in themselves serves as the action item (reminder) and messages that are better served by some type of project management system. (more…)

O.K., it’s about time that I get to the nitty-gritty of this thing. When you receive a message, something has to be done with it or your Inbox will begin to fill up again. I’ve got some suggestions:
Four Different Options for Email
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Lying to yourself doesn’t empty an Inbox

I’ve heard it said that you can lie to your friend and you can lie to your family, but you can’t lie to yourself. I have to admit that I’ve found people that are pretty good at lying to themselves, but that’s another story. But, if you want to win this Battle of the Inbox, you’re going to have to reach a high level of personal honesty! You’re going to have to be honest about true priorities, realistic about time expectations, and do a baseline gut check on what you really intend to do about any given message. (more…)

Less can be more

This is more of a time management issue than one directly related to the inbox but it will help you get more things done in less time. So, here’s the scenario… You receive a message that is approximately 800 words long (yep, I’m being arbitrary here) but when you boil those 800 words into serious content, the sender has just used that many words to present you with a question that requires nothing more than a “yes” or “no”. What’s your response look like? (more…)

In one of my next installments of “Winning the Battle” we’ll talk about how to handle emails that you will need to refer back to, or the messages that require some action on your part. But, before we move into that, let’s make sure that we are all on the same sheet of music. This is kind of like our Inbox Statement of Faith.

Inbox Statement of Faith (more…)

Sorry I left you hanging yesterday on the last two of the three simple rules. I don’t want to take up any more of your already busy schedule than necessary. Just to make sure you haven’t forgotten (or worse yet, missed) the first rule, we started with “Handle the Items in Order”. So, we’ll continue from there.

Handle One Thing at a Time (more…)

So far, we’ve looked at Just how big this battle really is, we’ve talked about a ‘Fresh Start” and how to “Setup you Email Workspace”. Hopefully, you’ve followed my simply, although not necessarily easy (the difficulty lies mostly in our emotional attachment to our messages), steps. If you have, I can assure you that your inbox is in the best state it’s been in for years. Let’s continue by giving you some mail handling rules.

Three Rules of Email Handling (more…)