{"id":110730,"date":"2017-10-20T10:07:04","date_gmt":"2017-10-20T15:07:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ict-pulse.com\/?p=110730"},"modified":"2017-10-20T10:07:04","modified_gmt":"2017-10-20T15:07:04","slug":"4-ways-productive-checking-emails","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/2017\/10\/4-ways-productive-checking-emails\/","title":{"rendered":"4 ways to be more productive when checking your emails"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is easy to waste a lot of time checking your emails. Here we suggest four things you can do to be more efficient and effective.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All too often, whenever we get an email notification \u2013 be it on our smartphone or PC \u2013 we feel compelled to open the message. As a result, and according to a survey conducted by the University of British Columbia, the average person checks his\/her email 15 times a day (Source:\u00a0 Mashable<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Although most of those sessions to check our emails might take less than a minute, they are distracting and can adversely affect our overall productivity. Further, the urge to check the messages does not necessarily or automatically mean that we intend to respond or act on the emails, but tends to be driven by the need to know what has arrived in our inbox. Below are four thing we can do to manage our emails more efficiently and effectively.<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 Schedule fixed times<\/h3>\n

Instead of checking our emails every time we get a notification, and so interrupt the other things we should be doing, it is better that we schedule specific times during the day when we focus on our emails. For most people, three times daily \u2013\u00a0 first thing in the morning; around midday; and towards the end of your workday \u2013 is more than enough. Having said this, the email alerts\/notifications themselves can also be a distraction. We thus suggest that the alerts be switched off.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 Take action<\/h3>\n

The biggest blunder we can make when checking our email, is just to read the messages, and deferring responding or taking action to a later date. In doing so, it means that we are allowing work to pile up, which ultimately lengthens our to-do list, and can be very demotivating. The best strategy, therefore, is to have the intention of getting things done. Hence, when going through our emails, be ready to take the action needed.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 Delete and archive<\/h3>\n

Following from the previous point, and with the thrust of taking action, most of the emails we receive in our inbox, though not spam, is really junk, such as promotions and social media-related notifications. After we have read it, and if needed acted on it, the email itself no longer has any value. We should thus have no difficulty with deleting them, and any other emails that just seems to be clogging up our inboxes.<\/p>\n

In another vein, there are emails that we need to keep. They are not actively needed, but we should be kept for the records. This category of emails can be archived and so removed from our inbox, but still be accessed (separately) when required.<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0 Use rules<\/h3>\n

Finally, most email facilities allow us to establish rules to manage the messages we receive. Through the rules, we can prioritise our messages, thus ensuring that the most important matters get our attention first.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Image credit:\u00a0Kenneth Buker<\/a>\u00a0(flickr)\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

___________<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is easy to waste a lot of time checking your emails. Here we suggest four things you can do to be more efficient and effective.   All too often, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[298,34,50],"class_list":["post-110730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ict-tech","tag-email","tag-lists-2","tag-productivity","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Mailbox-Kenneth-Buker-flickr.jpg?fit=1024%2C686&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2iE1G-sNY","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110730"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110735,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110730\/revisions\/110735"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}