Less-Is-More Blog by Pierre Khawand

Many of the business professionals we talk to seem to report that they spend endless hours in their e-mail inboxes. They tend to "live" there checking e-mail every few minutes or even seconds, having a dozen of e-mail messages open simultaneously, hopping from one to the next, and then deserting the latest one as soon as they hear the beep or see the alert, to open yet another message. Someone confessed recently at one of our workshops that when no new e-mails show up, he sometimes catches himself pressing the send/receive button repeatedly as if he is desperate for more. Does it sound like an addiction? Well, it is.

There is a lot more to discuss about this addiction, and this will be one of the topics we will touch on in future articles, but for now, we are going to focus on simplifying and optimizing the process--the e-mail management process that is. This is the second out of five strategies that I layout out in the last tip-of-the-month in which I also discussed the first strategy: "Using e-mail for what e-mail is best at."

The simplified e-mail process

Instead of "living" in the inbox and working on e-mail messages in an ad-hoc fashion, how about treating e-mail like any other task with a beginning and an end. We will discuss below how frequently we engage into this task, but for now, let us focus on the mechanics of this task. Let us also give this task a name: "Processing the Inbox." Processing the Inbox consists of the following:

• Going through the inbox one message at a time, starting with the most recent, and not leaving that message until we make a decision about it.
   
• If a message is urgent, we handle it right away.
   
• If a message is quick and easy, we hand it right away.
   
• If a message cannot be handled right away, for one reason or another, we make a decision about when we want or need to handle it and flag accordingly (or categorize it, or tag it, or label it, depending on which e-mail application you are using):
   
• If it has to be handled today, then flag it with a red flag
• It it can wait until tomorrow or later, then flag it with a blue flag
• If it can be delegated to someone else, then forward it to them, and flag it with a yellow flag

Processing the Inbox is not complete until you process all the new messages in the inbox (the messages that arrived since you checked the inbox last).

To see this process in action, view the free training module (see form in the left column) which demonstrates the step by step process (in this case for Microsoft Outlook 2003, even though the above process can be adapted to any version of Outlook or any other e-mail application that supports tagging or labeling such as Google Mail, and applications with add-on's that support tagging such as MailTags for Mac Mail).

The optimized e-mail process

Now that we have a process down, and we don't just do e-mail one at a time and endlessly, there is still an important questions to answer, and that is how often do we check e-mail? In other words, how do we optimize our workflow?

This brings us to the core issue that I have been evangelizing for years, and which I recently published in its most comprehensive form: The Results Curve--How to Manage Focused and Collaborative Time (free download available).  I won't discuss the details of the Results Curve here, but according to the Results Curve, it is best to check e-mail every 40 minutes, or whatever length of focused time you choose. So instead of checking e-mail every few minutes or few seconds or as soon as you hear the beep or see the alert, let e-mail wait until the next collaborative session.

This also means that at the end of the day, we need to leave room for an e-mail session, where we go through the messages we flagged for today, and handle these messages.

Before you answer your next e-mail, stop for a second and ask the question: Should I interrupt my current task and jeopardize my results, or should I wait until the next collaborative session?

Stay tuned for the next Tip-Of-The-Month article where I will discuss the next strategy: "Significantly reducing the output and the input."

In this series of articles, my goal is to tackle the issue of e-mail management from several angles. The e-mail overload problem is multi-faceted and not something that can be solved quickly. Most of us, bloggers and Twitterers are guilty of giving the impression that we can help our readers solve major problems by giving them the miraculous solution in a few paragraphs or even 140 characters. Let us stop this wishful thinking. Significant challenges require innovative solutions and persistent application of these solutions as well as ongoing learning and adjustment. This requires trial and error over a period of time until we find the winning formula.

If you are getting a large number of e-mails and feeling that e-mail is exhausting and out of control, I have some good news and some bad news for you. The bad news is that there is no immediate and easy solution (other than finding a new job and starting fresh, which is only a temporary solution). The good news is that there is a whole set of effective strategies that we can deploy to get the e-mail overload well managed. All together, these strategies are likely to bring us a significant relief and help us refocus our energy on the core issues and create more compelling results.

In the upcoming weeks and months, I will be writing a series of articles on this blog and elsewhere addressing at least five of these e-mail strategies and probably more. While many of these strategies are derived from the Accomplishing More With Less Methodology (see free e-book, workbook, and workshops), these articles will also include the latest findings from our ongoing research effort and will be part of the upcoming book on how to effectively manage your e-mail and Social Media activities. Hope you will join us in this effort and participate in the E-mail and Social Media 5-minute survey as well as post your comments on this blog.

The five e-mail strategies

Simply put, here are the five e-mail strategies:

1. Using e-mail for what e-mail is best at
2. Simplifying and optimizing the process
3. Significantly reducing the output and the input
4. Fearlessly facing the issues
5. Attacking the root causes

Let us start with the first strategy and stay tuned for more!

Using e-mail for what e-mail is best at

When you have a hammer everything looks like a nail:

Oh well! We have the hammer, and in this case it is called "e-mail." We have it and we tend to use it all the time. E-mail is easy. It is quick. It costs virtually nothing (if we are only looking at the hard costs). In addition, we can say whatever we want in an e-mail and not get interrupted by someone else's point of view (can be rewarding but dangerous). So no wonder why we are so quick to use it in almost any situation.

Blinded by the ease and speed of e-mail, among other factors, we tend to forget that e-mail is not the only tool for communicating. This is a list of some of the tools that can largely benefit us when used appropriately in conjunction with e-mail. What do you think these tools are ideal for and not so ideal for? Use this opportunity to jot down your answers and then compare with the answers below:

While there is not one answer, and no right or wrong answer, when it comes to how best to utilize these tools, here are some suggested answers as a starting point:

Let us add a few more asynchronous tools to the mix

• Blogs
• Wikis
• SharePoint
• Google Docs 

Blogs, wikis, Microsoft SharePoint, Google Docs, and other information and document sharing tools, can tremendously help take the load off of e-mail. One of the examples that I give in our workshops relate to how blogs for instance (in this case, we are referring to internal blogs) can help the knowledge experts within the team or organization answer important questions once instead of time after time, and make these answers accessible to everyone within the team or organization. E-mail is not the best way to leverage and share knowledge.

Let us start using e-mail for what e-mail is best at! Before you write your next e-mail, stop for a second and ask the question: Should this be an e-mail or not?

Stay tuned for the next Tip-Of-The-Month article where I will discuss the next strategy: "Simplifying and optimizing the process."

A few days ago, I posted an article about the Old terminology, new terminology: "People connecting with other people." A related topic that I have been thinking about is the "old" inbox and the "new" inbox. However the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there is even a newer inbox: The Social Media Inbox. What do these inboxes mean and what are the implications of the advent of the Social Media Inbox? Keep on reading!

The old inbox

I still remember the days when the inbox meant internal e-mail only. I was in Southern California at a technology company with about 100 employees at the time and everyone had access to Microsoft Outlook and used it for internal e-mail and for scheduling internal meetings. The external world was not "visible" to internal employees. There was no Internet, if you can imagine. Only a few people had access to MCI and a few others to Compuserve. These privileged people were able to connect to the external world but still had to go through hoops to do it.

The new inbox

Then came the Internet and suddenly the "new" inbox was born. The new inbox is connected to the whole world. This brought amazing opportunities and also an unprecedented e-mail overload. Every person ended up with a handful of e-mail inboxes ranging from work, to personal, to "throw-away" ones just to keep unwanted messages out of the way. Soon after came the invasion of the mobile devices and e-mail on the go. Consolidating messages into one e-mail application and/or synchronizing between multiple applications and devices became necessities and many of us have done some degree of consolidation and synchronization along the way.

And now meet the "new new" inbox: The Social Media Inbox

Then Web 2.0 snuck upon us! Now we are all part of the creation process and part of the conversation. Like never before, we the people can share information, participate in conversations, and build our own social networks. We are in direct contact with the people who once were invisible. Suddenly we are no longer just in our e-mail inbox(es). We are now as often or even more often in our new and expanded inboxes: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, Yahoo Groups, Google Groups, YouTube channels, del.icio.us bookmarks, StumbleUpon articles, and you name it, which all together I am calling the Social Media Inbox.

This inbox is emerging as a powerful force and even the most authoritative search engines are re-inventing their search approach to include the Social Media Inbox.

So what does it all mean? What are opportunities and the challenges?

The Social Media Inbox brings some unique opportunities and some rather unique challenges as well. On the opportunities side:

• We are connected with 100's of millions of people and are able to have real time conversations with them
• We are learning what they are like and how they think (market research)
• We are discussing our brand and the value that we bring to the table (marketing)
• We are influencing their buying decisions (sales)
• We are exchanging ideas and building on each other's ideas (innovation)
• And the list continues!

On the challenges side:

• We are faced with more information overload than ever before
• We are constantly interrupting our core activities to keep up with what is going on in the world
• We are not necessary leveraging this new inbox to the extent that we could
• And the list continues!

What does your Social Media Inbox (SMI) look like and how are you managing it?

If you haven't yet expanded your definition of the "inbox" and explored the Social Media world, this is the time to do so. Some exciting opportunities are awaiting you. If you have, this is the time to reflect further on the opportunities and challenges and how they can be managed to help us be more effective in the workplace and beyond.

As we continue to explore this topic and explore best practices to manage the SMI, we need your help! Please share your thoughts below or fill out this short Social Media Inbox survey (5 to 10 minutes) and we will share the survey results with you.

Take the Social Media Inbox survey and become part of the conversation!

How do most of us start our day? When we ask our workshop participants this question, the answer we invariably get is: "on e-mail". Here are some of the reasons why we start the day on e-mail (and why we keep going back to e-mail every time we hear the beep or when we are at a loss of what to do next) and I would like to hear from you what are the top 3 reasons for you (choose from the list or add your own--post your comment below):

1. Curiosity: We are curious about what happened in the world since we checked e-mail last.

2. Hope for good news: This is the winning-the-lottery syndrome. It may happen to me! I may get this great promotion or great deal or great surprise from someone.

3. Feeling accomplished: Replying to e-mails gives us the feeling that we are getting things done. Each e-mail message answered is like a micro-project successfully completed and checked off the list.

4. Fear of being left behind: We want to make sure we are not missing important information or developments, and potentially losing our competitive edge.

5. Anxiety about outstanding tasks: We cannot relax if we have outstanding e-mail messages.

6. Avoidance: Instead of focusing on more important and usually more difficult tasks, it is easier to be on e-mail.

7. Lack of direction/Need for direction: We don't know exactly what we should be doing, e-mail give us the answer, at least a temporary fix.

8. Handling urgent stuff: We have to check e-mail because we get urgent requests on e-mail, which need to be handled immediately.

9. Meeting the expectations of others: It is usually expected that e-mails are answered fairly quickly, either by our boss, colleagues, or generally as part of the culture in our organization. If we don't meet these expectations, we may be seen as "not fully on top of things".

And there are probably more reasons. All together, these factors make e-mail seductive, addictive, rewarding, and anxiety-provoking, all at the same time!

Extracted from The Accomplishing More With Less Workbook, now available at Amazon.com

This is the first post in what is likely to become a series of reflections on the role of e-mail and Social Media today and the upcoming years.

After 15 years of internet, is e-mail hanging on by a weak thread?

E-mail is overused and even abused, and users' mailboxes are congested--worse than traffic in the busiest metropolitan areas of the world. People are tired of scrolling up and down the inbox and many stopped looking at, and not to mention responding to, e-mail messages except for the urgent messages from their bosses or customers. Reaching people via e-mail (unless you are their boss or customer) has become quite challenging. It is "extreme" e-mail fatigue that we are suffering from. So many things fall through the cracks and so many inefficiencies are invading the work place and our personal lives. Does this sound like "chaos"? Well it is!

Is Social Media taking over?

While Web 2.0 tools (such as blogs, wikis, and Microsoft SharePoint) are emerging as the better alternatives for collaboration and information sharing, in this post, I am interested in focusing on the Social Media platforms and reflecting on their relationship to e-mail today and in the future.

Social media is the new kid on the blog (relatively new compared to good old e-mail).  People are still excited about the Social Media platforms. Even though these platforms are quite busy, they tend to be less intrusive than e-mail, and they give users the ability to scan the feed casually and jump in and respond only when they desire to do so. The expectations are less while the reach is much broader. And these platforms provide messaging functionality (similar to e-mail and Instant Messaging) which seem to get more attention and better response time than the traditional e-mail. 

And now the questions about the future of e-mail and social media

• Where do you see the future of e-mail versus Social Media? 
   
• Will it get to our work life as well (having more structured enterprise Social Media platforms that would include collaboration and social media all in one within the firewall)? 
   
• Will the traditional "public" e-mail approach eventually go away?
  What do you think of this hypothetical chart showing how the time spent on e-mail (and therefore the role of e-mail) will diminish over the next few years while the time spent on Social Media will increase. E-mail me YOUR  version of this chart (training@people-onthego.com):

Graph: Hypothetical hours spent per week on E-mail versus Social Media!

In the past, it used to be e-mail and meetings that consumed everyone's time, and now it is e-mail, meetings, and social media, and not necessarily in this order. For years, in our workshops, we talked about the e-mail overload, and taught ways to overcome the e-mail overload, and now we are broadening the scope to include social media.

So how do you reduce the social media overload?

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Be Strategic: Don't just be there, but be there with a clear purpose.
   
• Follow the relevant people: Those that add value and not just chatter. 
   
• Stay on brand: One of Jason Alba's advice that I keep re-iterating. 
   
• Reuse: Create high value content and reuse it in all platforms, you know they now all link to each other, so you can more easily leverage your content in multiple platforms. 
   
• Time yourself: Don't just be there indefinitely, make it 5, 15, or 40 minutes (again with a clear purpose) 
   
• Don't treat it like a homework (especially twitter): You don't have to keep up with what happened when you were gone. What happened before is mostly old news by now. 
   
• Remember that the time you spend on it needs to be proportional to the number of people you have in your network (otherwise, it is better investing time to growing your network).

Say "yes" to social media, "but" keep it well under control following the time management tips described above!

If we are unsure what to do, or hesitant to take on the next important and challenging task, consciously or subconsciously, what do we end up slipping into?

Into our e-mail inbox!

E-mail is "great" (or not so great) that way! It gives us this immediate satisfaction of getting something done and feeling good.  Does it sound like an addition? It is. And like any addition, the feeling good doesn't last too long, and we seek more of it to bring back that feeling, but what happens is that we get increasingly and chronically "e-mail fatigued."

So what can we do about it?

• How about becoming more purposeful and more intentional, and instead of resorting to e-mail (or Twitter-which is e-mail on steroid one might say), resorting to a few minutes of stopping and strategic thinking to really identify something meaningful to do. 
   
• How about we take on the challenging task first instead of e-mail first. Let e-mail be the reward (if it can be called a reward) instead of being the pre-requisite. When we take on the challenging task first, we learn and develop. We also prompt the issues and bring ourselves to face the issues. As a result we feel more accomplished and we contribute more significantly to our team and organization! 
   
• How about we disconnect for a bit (from e-mail, and even the web if applicable) and just focus on moving forward this important and strategic program or initiative. Adam. S. Christensen (our guest speaker, at the Gen X in Action webinar recently--recording available) said "I get the best work done when I am disconnected". Try it out and see for yourself!

Whatever it is for you (E-mail, Twitter, Facebook, or whatever else)  what are you going to do about it? Put it on the side for a bit, maybe even "disconnect", and get engaged into something more purposeful!