If you are feeling anything like I am these days I am feeling very overwhelmed with the volume of email that I have to process. I think we have all heard of the standard recommendations for handling mail and maybe I will try to elaborate on those some time in the future but for now here they are:

• Organize Your eMail folders to manage the volume of email
• Schedule uninterrupted time to process and organize email (don't we all wish)
• Process one item at a time, starting at the top.

I wanted to share with you some practices that I have been trying over the last couple of weeks (with some success, not total success but I think I am getting a bit of a handle on the email)

For each email that you read (you will have to make your own decisions as to how / when you read your email) make a near immediate decision to either:

• Delete it
• Do it
• Delegate it
• Defer it

Ok, so here is the fun part.  Give these a try if you think they might work for you.

Delete it

A bit of an obvious choice but I have a problem deleting emails (I still have emails archived from the mid 1990's) except for the super obvious ones (did you want to catch lunch etc.) so for this means immediately filing it (see organize your email folders above)

Do it

If you can respond in just one or two minutes (I assume that it is your planned time to read emails or you wouldn't be here) then do it, file it and forget about it.

Delegate it

I don't have too many people I can delegate things to but if you can delegate the actioning of the email then go ahead and do that, then file it and then forget about it.

Defer it

Here is the big one.  If you simply can't do any of the above you will have to defer the email until some other future time.  This is where I get caught and I think many of us get caught. What I do is just leave the email in my INBOX and watch it push its way to the bottom of the pile (sometimes to never be seen again).

Try this instead:

In Outlook (all versions 2003 and newer) right click on the message and MOVE the message to either your Calendar or your Task List (this creates a calendar or task item which will pop up those annoying / useful reminders on your screen to remind you that you have deferred this email). This action will also move the item out of your INBOX and will provide some positive reinforcement (I knew that psych course would come in handy one day) that you need to address this item.