Oftentimes responding to email just gets me caught up in the respond-send-receive-respond-send loop.  If I’m undisciplined this can happen multiple times in the space of 30 minutes. 

Quick responses really speed up the email cycle.  Instead consider a batching approach to email - do all your email responses at a set time of day (or two or three if you really must).  I tend to live in Outlook because that’s where all my tasks are but switching it off while I complete a task makes me much more productive.

A similar approach is to batch responses.  With each email its possible to delay the delivery.  So, if you want to send bad news, controversial news or generally not prod someone who you think is prone to rapid responses then you can set the delivery for Monday morning instead of Friday afternoon (thanks Grant for this tip).  When you create your email, just click on the options menu (inside the actual email) and this is where you can choose the delivery date and time.

A few weeks ago I described how I manage my email including my task management.  Here’s a few other tips.

I don’t have the reading pane turned on because I find it distracting. What does really work for me though is the autopreview which shows me the author, date and the first few lines of the message.  This means that I can quickly scan my emails to find the things that need to be dealt with urgently.

I find the autopreview is really useful when I’m on the road and working full days, often with evening dinner appointments.  This means that I can take 15 -30 minutes to deal with anything urgent leaving the rest (unopened but with me having a sense of what has come in) for later.

So, what about the rest?  I’ve found that one of the best uses of flying time is processing emails.  I usually get off a plane with any outstanding emails converted to tasks, deleted or with responses ready just waiting for me to get back online.

I’ve also recently started being more ruthless about what I move into my processed folder versus deleting.  I keep my deleted items for about 2-3 months before getting rid of them so I can feel pretty relaxed about ruthless deletion.  Consequently my processed emails are getting much smaller.

I follow Michael Roach’s blog  The Structure of Magic from time to time.

Something that caught my eye on one of his old posts was this:

“There’s a Taoist idea that I’ve always found profoundly enlightening. The idea is you’re on the torture table, which of course wasn’t too strange a situation to be in, in old China. And you’ve got the choice, you can either find out why you’re there, why you are being tortured, why they are doing this to you and why it’s you who’s having all the problems. They’ll answer all of your questions OR you can just get up off the table and go.

So are you asking why you have all the problems you have? Do you want to understand why you can’t get what you want? Or why don’t you just get off the flaming table!! ”

I think there are some times when that can be a true approach and other times when you have to think about what’s going on or else you will just head off and lie down on a different table taking the same questions and issues with you.  The real challenge is to know which situation is which - is it time to get off the table or is it time to do the thinking about why I’m on the table?