It does seem out of reach for many business professionals, but it is not, as we provided in the special webinar that we conducted last week. In this webinar, and after we explained the process and demonstrated the techniques, and answers participants questions, we gave everyone 20 minutes to work on their e-mail inbox and try to process as many e-mails as possible.
The results were plausible. Before we started the session, we asked the participants to tell us how many e-mails they had in their inbox. The poll consisted of the following answers:
- Less than 25
- Between 25 and 50
- Between 51 and 100
- Between 101 and 500
- More than 500
Here were the answers before and after the session
| Before | After | |
| Less than 25 | 0% | 20% |
| Between 25 and 50 | 0% | 0% |
| Between 51 and 100 | 18% | 30% |
| Between 101 and 500 | 27% | 30% |
| More than 500 | 55% | 20% |
PS: Please note that the percentages don't add up to 100% because not all participants participated in the poll
What made this possible is not just the process but also the focused time we took to work on it. The face that we were doing it as a group provided an additional motivation and make this goal of emptying the inbox a shared goal--we were all in it together.
If you are feeling overwhelmed by your e-mail inbox, consider transforming e-mail from being an ad-hoc activity to being a structured activity, and instead of being on e-mail all day long, spend focused time on e-mail, and then leave it alone and focus on the more important activities. Check out the resources below to get this started.
Additional Resources
- The next "Empty Your E-mail Inbox--hands-on session" on August 5, 2010
- The Accomplishing More With Less Workbook
- The Managing and Organizing Your E-mail Inbox workshop and demo video
- The Accomplishing More With Less Workshop
- The How to manage the e-mail overload, part 2 of many, tip-of-the-month article
Hope you will be able to join us at the next session on August 5, 2010.
