The Voice’s Mark Pack has published some useful tips on how to get to where every busy Parliamentarian, councillor, candidate and activist wants to be – Inbox Zero.
They include such gems as:
3. Stop using your inbox as a substitute for filingQuite often there will be an email you have read, responded to but do not want to forget quiet yet. Perhaps you have made an order and don’t want to bury away the confirmation until the goods arrive. That is fine — but do not use your inbox for that. Create a “pending” folder to hold these interim messages. Have a check through of that folder every week and never put messages in there which still need action from you.4. Speed up replies with standard templatesSome email programs let you write template answers and give this feature an obvious name, such as ‘canned responses’ in Gmail. Other email packages have the same option but hide it under a deceptive name. I have lost count of the number of people I have met who did not make the imaginative leap from realising that a ‘signature’ in Microsoft Outlook could actually be a complete email.
My personal favourite – i.e. the one I’m least likely to follow at the moment and really ought to – is:
5. Only delay if it will be quicker or easier to reply in the futureProcrastination is one of the great enemies of inbox zero. You see an email and think you just don’t quite want to reply to it now, so you put it off. And next time you see it you put off replying again. And again. It is a very human trait. The answer? Ask yourself if replying at some point in the future will be quicker or easier. Sometimes it will (e.g. because you are waiting for some information), in which case delay is acceptable. But if it isn’t, then reply now. Right now. Really, right now.
The rest of Mark’s advice is on the 12 Most blog, I’m off to investigate how far I am from inbox zero – quite far I suspect!
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2 Comments
‘but do not want to forget quiet yet.’
typo?
3. annoys me intensly. Why do people do it? Is it some sort of virility symbol to have 1,823 emails sitting in your inbox?