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Written by Vanessa Montanari.

The emails … You can receive several dozen per day depending on your position. You’re going on vacation? This is the horror: you end up with a mass of emails to deal with! Sometimes just unimportant information, sometimes emergencies. How to get out alive and not become a slave to your e-mail box? Here is my recipe.

The less time you spend on your emails, the better you’ll feel!

We usually spend hours in front of our e-mails and we finally realize that … oops … the priorities on our « to do list » do not advance.

Pick up your e-mail box, up to 3 times a day

That is to say 1 time in the morning (10h), 1 time in the early afternoon (14h) and before leaving the office (16h30). The goal is to dedicate specific moments to the review of your emails so as not to scatter you and not spend too much time reading and processing your emails.

Reading your emails should not be the top priority of the morning

In principle, you prepare the list of priorities for the next day before leaving the office. The top is to start the day with your first priority task on your « to do list ». Then at around 10am, you can start reviewing your mails. Result? You will have advanced on your priorities of the day instead of spending 1 hour to read your mails. Do not worry, if a real urgency need to happen, your team will not hesitate to call you on your phone.

Do not hesitate to create rules when you can

Thanks to the rules in Outlook, for example, you can automatically transfer emails to other people or store them automatically so that they do not clutter your e-mail box. To learn more about the rules, click here.

Empty your e-mail box

Your e-mail box should not serve as a list of things to do

Clearly, it is either:

– you process the mail immediately because it takes 2 minutes and you archive it,

– you process the mail immediately because it takes 2 minutes and you delete it

– You put it on your « to-do list » and then you archive it or you delete it.

Whenever you go to process your mails, empty your box. It should be empty!

Either they are on your « to do list » or they are treated. Some people will say « yes, but it’s just moving the problem. » I reply, « Yes, probably, but in any case, all your tasks will be centralized in your « to do list » and it is this list that you will treat in priority, in the morning, before your first mails.

You will see, your mailbox will be clean, empty (magic) and you will feel much better!

The more concise your e-mails will be, the more time you will save!

In order to save as much time as possible in your mails. Go to the basics! This will save you valuable minutes. Make it a habit to write a single paragraph of up to 4-5 lines and hold on to it.

Attention, your to do list must be effective!

Yes! For it is the one that will centralize all the actions to be carried out. It must therefore remind you and allow you to implement deadlines. Your employer probably provides you with task management tools, usually in CTMS. If your organization has not planned it, ask your employer to subscribe to this type of software. Otherwise, you still have the paper or electronic version (on mobile or in the cloud).

This type of tool exists in thousands. There are for example: https://en.todoist.com/, but be careful to choose a secure tool and not to put on information too confidential!

My little extra: The file to print

During my email ranking, I also have a « print » folder in which I classify everything that needs to be printed for ranking and to give to the assistant. As soon as I have time, I print all these documents in mass to have them classified. This is the ranking day! Youhou!

Do you want other methods to improve your productivity? You can buy the book below, it has served me well for the management of all my professional activities.

That’s it, I gave you my best recipes! Ready, fire, go: treat, delete, archiv