If you’re not careful, you can easily spend your whole day playing email ping pong.
In this article, I’m going to teach you 5 ways to manage your emails productively and save time.
These hacks could save you hundreds of hours:
Plus help you focus on the most important tasks for your business.
So let’s jump in…
Table of Contents
5 Powerful Email Productivity Tips
Tip #1: Archive Everything You Can
If you’ve already answered an email, archive it ASAP.
Don’t leave old emails hanging in your inbox like a bad smell.
Because if your inbox is cluttered, it’s distracting.
Instead, focus on getting to inbox ZERO:
Once all your emails are answered, your inbox should be empty.
Why?
Because if your email inbox has 200-300 emails, it’s going to be VERY cluttered – meaning you’ll dread opening it.
ACTIONS:
If you want to keep your inbox productive, uncluttered, and clean, then archive everything you possibly can.
Tip #2: Only Check Your Emails Once Per Day
So what’s next?
Make sure you only check your email inbox once per day.
Why?
Email inboxes are addictive.
Every time you open your inbox, you release dopamine.
(That’s basically the hormone that makes you feel good.)
But it’s not productive:
And so you don’t want to train your brain to spend all day refreshing your emails.
So instead:
Don’t waste ANY time checking your inbox, waiting for emails to come back or playing email ping pong.
But when’s the best time to open your email inbox?
Do it after all your most important tasks are completed:
The problem is that email inboxes are usually answering someone else’s agenda.
Maybe someone is trying to ask you for a favour or they need information from you.
Here’s the problem:
This distracts you from the critical tasks that could be far more productive.
So avoid your emails as much as possible!
Tip #3: Use Canned Responses
Make sure you use canned responses:
These are templates for the most common email responses you send.
Here’s a video tutorial on how canned responses saved me 100+ hours of work:
Why are canned responses so effective?
Most emails you send are very similar:
- Maybe you’re chasing someone up for a response
- Answering an FAQ
- Checking in with a supplier/colleague
With canned responses, you have a bank of email templates that require very little mental energy to use.
Plus they’ll save you time typing.
This is particularly useful if you’re using Gmail, G Suite, or Outlook.
You can save canned responses and then click them when you need them.
Now, this doesn’t mean you should non-sensically paste canned responses like some mad email addicted robot:
But this hack WILL save you a lot of time.
Tip #4: Outsource Your Emails ASAP!
Make sure you outsource your emails as soon as you possibly can…
Get an assistant in place to manage your inboxes:
It’s a game-changer.
Why?
Because you’ll avoid getting distracted with emails that someone else could answer.
And this way, you can focus on more meaningful tasks such as sales, marketing or business development.
It’s easy to find a good virtual assistant with websites like UpWork.com.
There are many more productive tasks you can work on than just answering emails.
Emails are usually very low impact tasks:
That’s why I recommend outsourcing your inbox as soon as possible.
And it’s so easy to train someone up:
Anyone can answer your emails with a bit of training.
Plus if you have templates and canned responses in place, that’ll save your assistant a lot of typing.
Tip #5: Use Shift For Managing Multiple Inboxes
What should you do if if you have multiple inboxes?
Use email software like Shift to manage them all at once.
Maybe you have a work email, a personal email etc.
With Shift, you can manage them all together in one place:
So you don’t need to keep managing and flicking from one to the other.
Plus, this saves you logging in and out of different inboxes:
Overall, it’s just a much easier way to manage your emails.
In Summary
That’s it from me and my top 5 tips for managing your emails productively.
Now, which tip helped you the most?
