Bonjour this is Cyril from Work Smarter: Live Better.
In this video, I want to share a simple suggestion that can completely change your relationship with emails.
I’m at the moment in London, and as you can see Buckingham Place and the Thames river is behind me. It’s one of those glorious days, clear blue sky, in fact for England one of those rare sunny days! Tomorrow I’m working with a group of leaders from one of my global clients. First session: Declutter. Declutter their files, inbox, tasks, time. When it is time to talk about emails, I will be talking about three speeds.
When you think about email management, I suggest you think about three different speeds. The speed gear, the short focus gear, and the deep focus gear.
What do I mean by that?
The speed gear is when you process your inbox. Anything which is less than two or three minutes, do it now. And if it’s more than 10 to 15 minutes, schedule it now. So, when you manage your inbox you are just triaging. You are in speed gear. You want to deal with as many emails as possible.
The emails which require about 10 minutes of your time, you’re going to move to a folder you call your 10-minute folder. At the end of the day you block 45 minutes to deal with these emails. So, when you are doing your 10-minute folder you are going to be in a short focus gear.
For the longer emails, they are now scheduled in your calendar. If you schedule an email to be done for example on a Wednesday at 10 O’Clock for half an hour, then on Wednesday you will be in deep focus gear.
Think about processing emails at three different gears,
- the speed gear, when you triage your inbox.
- the short focus gear at the end of the day for your 10-minute emails,
- the deep focus gear when you block time in your calendar to deal with those emails which require more time.
This is this week’s Work Smarter Live Better tip. Hope you enjoy it. I’m going to continue to enjoy London, it’s a little bit cold coming from Australia but such a nice day. I am going to continue walking and be super ready for tomorrow.
Have a lovely day
Cheers
Cyril
