I’m writing about one hundred things I’ve learned as a product manager.
Product managers just loooove solving problems and answering questions. Emails present us with an enticing list of both, which is why we find it so hard to tear ourselves away from them. I reveal three quick tips to show you how you can regain control of your inbox after the break!
The trick to regaining control over your emails is skim-read them and to use The Four Ds:
The numbers of emails should correspond roughly to the size of circles above, namely that the number of emails you actually need to respond to immediately yourself should be minimal.
When I surveyed my team to see how they spent their working day, we found that we were spending most of our time on email. As an experiment we tried the following:
- Block out two thirty-minute slots for reading and responding to emails, one in the morning, one in the afternoon
- Don’t check emails outside of these two allocated slots
- When checking the emails, use The Four Ds
See how much more time you have in the day when you follow these steps.
Why don’t you share how you got on, or some of your own tips for regaining control of your inbox, in the comments?