Emails are an integral part of professional life and well composed emails concerning business proposals, meetings plans or exchange of ideas can get a lot of work done in a few clicks. However, how many times have you sat in the office and realized that you had not done much in last half an hour other than check emails? One often has this urge to refresh one’s inbox in expectation of some important email or glance to the alert box even if one if working on something else. So there is always a dilemma on whether one is managing one’s time well with respect to emails. It appears that this issue is more universal than one could have thought. The New York Times has an article on managing one’s emails efficiently.
The article suggests to turn off auto-notifications and also to avoid checking every incoming email immediately. There is also advice to take out time to respond to important emails in the last two months which have not been dealt with. This helps clear the inbox also the mind. If one can respond to some email with an easy answer, it is best to respond as soon as possible. Moreover, if some email may be better handles by some one else, it is best to forward the email to him/her.
A person I know actually manages a stop-watch to keep track of time when he actually does work and when he is simply procrastinating! This is too obsessive for my liking. What works better is the good old fashioned ‘things to do list’. Once all the things have been ticked, who minds some relaxation?
