June 23, 2006
E-mail Maximization Day 1
As I wrote yesterday, my e-mail accounts have owned my workdays for at least the last five years or so. Yesterday I decided to take back control of my time. Here is a re-cap of my action steps and the results:
Get rid of the blackberry.
This was easier than I thought. It was great not having the damn thing buzzing every five minutes. I did not miss it one bit. Since I use a mobile phone that is separate from the Blackberry, I did not miss any phone calls by shutting it off.
I’m going to cancel the Blackberry account next week. Yesterday proved that it was totally unnecessary.
Read and respond to e-mail only four times a day.
This was not too bad either. I was a little anxious during the day but I think that feeling will subside over time. I may need to adjust the times when I check e-mail. I’m not sure yet about optimal timing but overall this was easier than I thought it would be.
My productivity was off the charts high yesterday. I completed a project that I have been trying to finish for a couple of weeks. I also was able to return phone calls without being completely distracted one time. This made the calls shorter (I usually type replys to e-mail while the other person is talking . Side note: I can’t believe how rude that looks when I write it down. I bet I’m not the only person who does that.)
The day flew by as I was truly absorbed in work for the first time in a long time. It was great not to have that little window pop up with an e-mail every thirty seconds. I think I may be able to cut back to checking e-mail less frequently. The next step is to set an auto responder to let people know when I will be getting back to them. This will help manage expectations.
Limit e-mail time to fifteen minutes at each of the four check-ins.
This was tough. I only hit the fifteen minute mark once. Every other time was about a half hour. I’m going to need to make additional adjustments. I may experiment with only having e-mail with my name in the “to” box go into my inbox. I’ll move e-mail where I’m “cc”d into a file that I’ll read and clean out once a week. I bet there is a lot of e-mail I don’t need to read.
Keep a clean inbox.
This was another semi-easy task. Yesterday morning I moved everything in my inbox into a folder and I never looked back. On Saturday I’m going to clean out that folder and delete it. During the day yesterday I took action on each e-mail as I read it and I only have one message in my inbox now. It contains the phone number of someone I need to call back later today. I don’t use a task list (probably a mistake) so I need to keep the phone number where I can get to it quickly.
Lessons learned from Day 1
- Who the hell did I think I was? The world did not stop because I didn’t reply to people in thirty seconds or less. I’m not so important that people need my insight in real time. Responding a couple of hours later is just fine.
- The same process can be done with voice mail and snail mail. I’ll master the e-mail habit first but I absolutely plan to take on those other areas.
- Most people write lousy e-mail messages. It’s long and it takes time to figure out what the subject is. I’m going to develop a course on e-mail writing. First blush – e-mail should be written like a news story. There should be “nut graf” right at the beginning of the e-mail (A nut graf is the paragraph that contains the main idea of a story.) This way I can decide if I should be reading the rest of the e-mail or pitching it – which I did with 80% of the stuff that hit my inbox yesterday.
More updates to follow as I refine this process.
Filed under: Personal Productivity
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Email culture
How cautiously do you use emails with your team, company, customers? Do you think on how to help them make their life easier? Email today is the means of collaboration, even if you organization is happy to work with a
Trackback by Roman's miles — June 25, 2006 @ 15:57
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[…] Roman Rytov alerted me to Dave Lorenzo’s story about how he ditched his Blackberry and suddenly found that he was getting more quality work done! […]
Pingback by Email Overloaded » Blog Archive » Success Story of the Ditched Blackberry — June 27, 2006 @ 18:23
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[…] Lisa Haneberg’s post brought to my attention these two posts from David Lorenzo. In post 1, called Making the Most out of E-Mail, he shares some new habits he is going to try to reduce the time he spends on e-mail and improve his focus. In the second post, E-mail Maximization Day 1, David tells you how day 1 went. […]
Pingback by on Business and Management » Blog Archive » Life after e-mail — July 2, 2006 @ 18:13
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[…] E-mail Maximization Day 1 […]
Pingback by Career Intensity Blog - David V. Lorenzo — July 14, 2006 @ 17:17
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[…] Lately, people have been talking about the benefits of shutting down the auto-updates and instantaneous reminders. It seems like all the cool kids are doing it. […]
Pingback by Virtually Shocking » Blog Archive » Cutting back on e-mail checking — May 31, 2007 @ 17:05
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Interesting how we make ourselves blackberry slaves. I’m a BB fiend too but I feel neither guilty nor any taste of nostalgia to the pre-blackberry era. I simply don’t think that I’m obliged to answer all the emails immediately if I have a BB on my belt. Cancel it completely? I wouldn’t go for that. I use it to be in the picture of what’s going on, not to answer every email. I primarily answer from my notebook unless it’s really critical.
It’s interesting how email culture is developed in every group. My boss, for instance, answers really urgent emails instantly but others, with lower severity, can get answered in days. We know that if he doesn’t answer he simply is checking something and no sense to remind him again. I see that people load or position is not related to the answering latency at all. I know some very executive people returning emails in hours and other beginning managers that can “forget” to answer an email or return a call.
Anyway, Dave, interesting approach (a bit too radical to me:-). Keep us posted as the time goes.
Comment by rytrom — June 24, 2006 @ 16:03
Haha, I have to admit I’m enjoying reading about your email adventure. It’s definitely tough but I always get more done when Outlook is closed. I can’t wait to see how it’s goes next week…
Comment by mcfara — June 24, 2006 @ 17:25