Personal emails, professional emails, social media emails. Each day we are inundated by emails. 205 billion are sent daily. This causes distraction, frustration and more work than ever before. The cluttering of spam doesn’t help.
So how can you be more efficient in dealing with this behemoth.
Not every email needs to be responded to instantly. Prioritise and reply to the others when necessary. Understand what ones deserve a reply, many are just bulk emails sent out that you won’t get a response too anyway. Use unroll.me to unsubscribe quickly to those that clog your feed. You don’t need to be emailed regularly by a brand you made one purchase from 3 years ago.
More importantly, respond to ones designated for you. All of them. Everyone deserves a response and an answer. It’s your decision what you write. Think of the frustrations you feel when someone ignores your email. It might seem really important to you or you need an answer to move on and you get nothing back.
Find a rhythm of when you respond so you can focus on your other tasks. .
Polite email etiquette goes a long way and is always appreciated.
What are the challenges you find with email and any ideas on how it can be improved?