The Productivity Pro® Blog by Laura Stack - Time Management, Getting Things Done, How to Be More Productive

“My first reading of an e-mail is actually a screening process to determine what needs attention…I’ll decide on the spot what to delete and what needs that second reading prior to taking action.” — Junior Morales, poll respondent, Puerto Rico

“Depends on the message. If it’s spam or FYI, then once is enough. If it’s asking specific questions that need thought and/or research to answer, then as often as needed until it’s clear how to proceed. ” — Davyd Breeskin, poll respondent, Washington, D.C.

Several months ago, I posted a poll on LinkedIn asking how many times a day my followers checked their email. The results were rather eye-opening, and as you may recall, I blogged about them in early October 2011. Because I found those answers so intriguing, I posted a follow-up poll in December, asking, “On average, how many times do you read an email before doing anything with it?”

Once again, the troops came through with some very interesting responses. This time I got a total of 46 votes and six thoughtful comments—a somewhat lighter response than normal, but then again, it was the holiday season.

As you may recall, those who answered the earlier poll tend to check their email more often than I recommend—in fact, 63% admitted to checking it throughout the day, never turning their email off, while another 13.6% said they check email hourly. But happily, it appears (based on the current poll results) that while my respondents may check their email a bit too often, they usually don’t damage their personal productivity by obsessing over the individual messages. A total of 17 voters (37%) read each email only once before doing something with it, as most productivity training schemas teach (including mine). Twenty-six voters (57%) review each email twice, while just three (7%) check each email three times. No one voted for the other categories, “Four times” and “Five times”—thank goodness!

The voters didn’t deliver any real surprises this time on the demographics front. Generally, I get a more-or-less even split between management (including C-Suite and business owners) and everyone else; this time, the votes skewed just a bit toward the rank and file. As usual, among those who identified their gender, men voted slightly more often than women did: 18 vs. 13 (58% vs. 42%). It still surprises me how often LinkedIn members fail to include gender on their poll profiles; this time, 15 voters (almost a third of the total) preferred to remain gender-anonymous. The age breakdown was roughly equal across the categories, at least for the 21 voters—fewer than half— who provided their ages (an omission I can more easily understand!). The number of voters varied from 4-6 per age category; the differences are too small, really, to consider them significant, given the limited statistical sample.

The same proved mostly true for the vote breakdowns within the answer categories as well; though I will say that three-quarters of the voters for “Only once” were men, and voters in upper management proved significantly less likely than their subordinates to look at their email more than once. At the risk of extrapolating from insufficient data, the latter seems reasonable, since upper-level employees are usually better at time management.

And make no mistake: as a general rule, the better your time management skills, the less time you waste handling the information that crosses your desk. This assumes, of course, that you give each piece of information your full attention while deciding its fate—and then dismiss it from your mind, so you can move on to the next without bias or distraction. This rule holds true not just for email, but for all forms of information: voicemail, paperwork, verbal orders…and just about anything else you can imagine.

So: how would you vote? If you didn’t participate in this poll, I’d still like to hear what you have to say. Just leave a comment and let me know!

How often do you read an email before handling it? In other words, how many times do you click on an email before it before it’s gone from your inbox? Please vote in my poll. Thanks!

“I don’t check my e-mail, it checks me to see if I’m still there.” — Ian Pattison, poll respondent, Canada

“I never switch it off, and I also have a self-imposed policy of responding immediately if I’m sitting at my desk, however busy I am. ” — Wayne Andrews, poll respondent, United Arab Emirates

“I like getting email. It is a diversion from a tough job or from a boring task. Stopping every now and then to answer email is like taking a break. If one appears to be a time waster, it gets postponed for later. ” — Lester Stephenson, poll respondent, USA

As a productivity consultant, one of my chief concerns is what most of us mistakenly call “time management.” Obviously, time comes in preset amounts for everyone and we use it up whether we like it or not, so we can’t truly manage or conserve it as we can more tangible resources. Therefore, time management actually boils down to self management. The savvy worker finds ways to use time efficiently, refusing to waste it or allow external factors to monopolize it to the detriment of workplace productivity.

In all my productivity training talks and courses, I emphasize a measured response to email and other electronic disruptions as an essential time management technique. Among other things, I teach my clients to check their email just a few times a day. It seemed natural, then, to ask my LinkedIn colleagues how often they check their email, and I did just that in a poll that ended on September 30, 2011. I received 212 formal responses; in addition, 15 people left comments, including two who didn’t vote but made their choices clear. So in all, the poll logged 214 responses.

“All Day, Every Day. I Never Turn It Off” was far and away the most common choice (N = 135), beating the runner-up, “Every Hour” (N = 29), by more than one hundred votes! It garnered a full 63% of the responses, while “Every Hour” got just 13.6%. Two other options, “2-4 Times Daily” and “5-7 Times Daily,” got 22 and 24 votes (10.3% and 11.2% of the total). “Once” came in dead last with 4 votes (1.9%).

I would love to say that these results surprise me…but they don’t, really. I’ve long been aware of the obsessive allure of email, and how it has become one of the true timewasters of the modern office. Somehow, we find it almost impossible to mitigate our Pavlovian response to incoming messages. As a result, many of us are slaves to our inboxes, afraid we might miss something important if we don’t stay connected. Most of the time, this does nothing but shoot holes in our productivity.

That said, I do recognize the fact that email represents the lifeblood of many modern businesses. They not only get most of their orders via email, they also handle customer service through the same medium. Indeed, several commenters made it clear that their job requirements determine their email habits.

This time, the seniority of the respondents split right down the middle for all voting slots, with managers, owners, and C-Suite execs responding in numbers essentially equal to the “All Others” category. Similarly, the age breakdown yielded similar statistics for all four ranges (18-29, 30-36, 37-44, and 45+), with only the “Every Hour” and “5-7 Time Daily” results displaying notable variances. People 37 or older were more than twice as likely to check email hourly as their younger colleagues, while those 30-36 led the pack in checking 5-7 times a day. But I must point out that relatively few people voted for either choice.

The gender results proved interesting as well; the only choices with significant differences were “2-4 Times Daily” (13 men vs. 4 women, or a 76%-24% split) and “All Day” (56 men vs. 46 women, or 55% and 45%). Only 160 of the 214 responders provided their genders, with a breakdown of 90 men and 70 women—a ratio of about 56% to 44%.

LinkedIn provides nationalities only for commenters, since you can link directly back to their personal pages; everyone else remains anonymous. Now, I hesitate to peg Americans as the world leaders in over-checking email, since only 15 people commented and LinkedIn remains a mostly American phenomenon…but of those 15 commenters, nine (60%) hailed from the USA. Canada provided two of the other six, with the U.K., India, Brazil, and the United Arab Emirates rounding out the total.

These poll results demonstrate clearly that over-checking email remains a huge problem. At first glance, it may not seem like such a big deal to spend a minute here and there responding to email, but numerous studies (and my own 20 years of experience) have proven that constant connectivity stifles employee productivity. It’s one thing if you have to keep your email client open all day in order to do your job; but if you don’t, then you’re just damaging your productive potential by checking, checking, and rechecking hour after hour.

As always, thanks to everyone who participated in this poll. If you didn’t get a chance to vote, I’d love to hear what you have to say…by email, ironically!

I’m curious to know how often you check your email each day. Please vote in my poll: http://linkd.in/nTAJVK. Please comment; I’d love to hear your thoughts on the impact email has on your daily productivity.

I was reading an article in Information Week appropriately titled, “Eaten by the Email Monster.” http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2006/08/eaten_by_the_em.html

It links to several useful articles on how to handle information overload. I thought I’d add my thoughts on how to efficiently process email: the 6-D Information Management System™:

1. DISCARD = Delete it

2. DELEGATE = Forward it

3. DO = Reply immediately if it will take you three minutes or less

4. DATE = Needs work but not now. The key is to somehow get it out of your in-box. Pick one favorite method and try to be consistent, so you don’t confuse your brain about what you did with that email. Options:

* Move to a process folder called “Action” or something similar.

* For emails that require action, move (NOT drag, which creates a copy) them to Tasks (or drag to the to-do icon in Lotus) by right-clicking the message and selecting Move to Folder, and then Tasks. A new Task automatically opens and inserts the email into the text portion of the message, which can now be replied to right out of the task). This physically removes the email from your in-box, not just create a copy.

* For time-sensitive emails (meetings or appointments), follow the same procedure above, but select Calendar after you Move to Folder, which will open a new calendar item and automatically move the email message to the text portion of the window.

* If you’d rather work with a paper copy, print the email and file it in your tickler folder. Create a personal folder called @Tickler and drag email there that requires follow-up. When the paper copy (trigger) comes up in your tickler file, you know the original is in your @Tickler folder. That will save you from having to retype the email message when you respond to it.

* Copy the email into the contact’s record in your contact management software (such as ACT or Goldmine) and schedule an activity to follow up.

* Set an email reminder (NOT a calendar reminder or Task reminder) by right-clicking in the flag area (NOT setting a flag) and selecting Add Reminder. Fill in the day and time you want the reminder on the email, and move the email to the proper project folder. You will get a reminder when the email isn’t in your in-box (Outlook 2003).

* Forward it back to yourself, select Options, and check “Don’t deliver before,” fill in a date and send. Delete original.

* Drag to the proper email personal folder, and write a to-do on your paper planning as a cross-reference to remember to do it.

5. DRAWER = If no action is required, but you’d like to keep the email for reference, create a personal folder for the project or reference type and drag the email to the correct folder. Or you could create a Word or other word processing document and save it on your hard drive.

6. DETER = Unsubscribe from email lists and tell your friends to stop sending you their “joke of the day”! Or use the Office Assistant (under “Tools”) or other Rules to automatically moving email from particular people to certain folders (or just delete it then).

I hope this helps! Force yourself to do one of the 6 D’s every singe time you look at a new email. All the email in your in-box will be new, and you will stop re-reading messages over and over. Do a major processing spree like this at least three times a day, but do NOT check them as they are coming in. Turn off the global alerts, set Rules to play for important people, and control your OCD trigger-happy email finger!

Clarity in workplace communication is highly important in any format, and these days, more and more business is conducted through email. Therefore, it’s beneficial to learn how to maximize the content of your email messages, while minimizing the possibility of confusion.

You should start with an informative, keyword-rich subject line that grabs the reader’s attention. Don’t leave the subject line blank, and don’t be vague or non-specific; on the other hand, don’t overuse exclamation points or capital letters. Either might lead an inattentive recipient to think your email is spam, resulting in it getting deleted—something that might range in consequence from minor to disastrous. If you’re replying to an existing email, don’t change the subject line unless you must. Otherwise, the recipient may not realize it’s a reply to their original email, and they might miss or delete it.

Unlike face-to-face or even telephone conversations, with email there’s no tone of voice or body language to help you convey your message. You really do have to say exactly what you mean in order to get your point across. In the body of the email itself, be concise and don’t use vague language. Make sure you have exactly the right word, and use simple terms that are difficult to mistake. Give the email some thought before you even start typing, so you can organize your points and choose your words carefully.

When you do start typing, make your points efficiently and one at a time, wrap it up, and end it. Provide only enough information to communicate the issue, and write in a natural style without being stilted or ceremonial. You can be informal if communicating to someone you work with regularly, but you should avoid using slang, emoticons, or texting abbreviations .

Finally, be sure to conduct an edit and run it through spell-check before you send it; people don’t expect perfection out of email, but they do expect professionalism. Typos can cause confusion, and in some cases they can cause the recipient to take you less seriously than they should; and again, both problems can damage productivity. So get the email as right as you can without falling into the perfectionism trap.

Join us on Monday, July 25 at 11:00 AM Mountain for the next webinar in our Microsoft Outlook 2010 series!

Outlook 2010: Time Savers and Efficiency Boosters

Automatic Email Notification, Creating Rules, Rules Wizard, New Item Shortcut, Send/Receive Times, Create Templates for Common Responses, Outlook Template for Letters, AutoSearches, Quickly Jump Around within Outlook, Keyboard Shortcuts, Take a Poll and Tally Results, Specify Which Address Book Opens First, Find Messages with Lightning Speed, Add Groups and Shortcuts in the Folder List, Create a New Toolbar with Favorite Buttons, Add Your Own Menu with Your Favorite Commands.

Join us for this one-hour module for $39, or purchase the entire 12-part series for only $349.

Learn more and place your order today at:
http://www.theproductivitypro.com/s_outlook-virtual-training_1210.html

In sales, there will always be more things to do than time to do them. Working longer isn’t going to save you. (I’d bet you’ve never gone to sleep at the end of a long day with everything on your to-do list completed.) To counter this never-ending battle, you’ll need to learn to be more efficient and get your work done in less time.

Always keep in mind that it doesn’t matter if you worked a 12-hour day if 10 of those hours didn’t involve tasks that translate into revenue. To free up more time for client acquisition (asking for referrals, calling prospects, networking, etc.), you must decrease time spent on administrivia and increase time spent on the selling function. If you can figure out how to be more productive during the day and achieve greater results in less time, you can leave the office earlier and get a life.

Learn how to use your software. One of the many ways sales people waste time during the day is with Microsoft Outlook (or whatever email software you use). I estimate people waste 30 minutes to 2 hours a day with incorrect or inefficient information management systems. Sometimes it’s a simple matter of not understanding what Outlook is capable of doing (Journaling, Notes, Customized Contact Forms, Task Tracking, etc.). As a Microsoft Certified Application Specialist (MCAS) in Outlook, I estimate most people only understand and use 10-20% of Outlook’s capabilities.

The Inbox is not a to-do list. Pull the action from the email and move it to the correct location. Do NOT simply flag the email, which simply leaves it in the inbox.
1. Right-click on the email.
2. Select “Move to Folder” from the short cut menu.
3. Select Tasks from the list if it’s a “to-do” item or Calendar if it has a specific time.
4. Click OK.
5. This will activate a task properties window.
6. Update all of the information accordingly. Use the “Start Date” to indicate when you want the task to appear on your To-Do Bar.
7. Click the “Save and Close” button.
8. Make sure your TaskPad (2003) or To-Do Bar (2007/2010) sorts by Start Date, not Due Date.

File email in your existing folder system. You already have a folder system on your hard drive or a shared drive. Rather than keeping a different list of personal folders in your Outlook, save emails in your existing folders to keep reference items together. Just as you would save a Word document or PowerPoint show, you can save email as a file. While viewing the email:
1. Under the File menu, select Save As.
2. Navigate to the correct folder on your hard or shared drive.
3. Change the file name, if desired.
4. In the Save as Type dropdown menu, select Outlook Message Format (*.msg).
5. Click Save.
6. When you double-click the Outlook icon, the email will open within your Outlook software, just as if it were in the inbox.

Automate manual actions. Use Outlook’s Rules; they help you manage your e-mail messages by performing actions on messages that match a specific set of conditions. After you create a rule, Outlook applies it when a message arrives in your Inbox or when you send a message. Spend some time playing with the Rules Wizard to explore all the cool things you can do, such as forwarding to a list, automatically deleting mail from certain people, printing, moving messages where you’re cc’d into a specified folder, or moving messages with certain words in the subject field to a folder.
1. On the Tools menu, click Rules and Alerts.
2. Click New Rule.
3. Make sure the “Start creating a rule from a template” button is selected.
4. Follow the Wizard.

Keep your notes in your CRM up to date. Keep relationship manager notes for every client contact in your company’s proprietary system, ACT, Salesforce.com, or Outlook. If you have Outlook, this feature is called the Journal, which is a little-known, powerful feature rarely used by immensely helpful for salespeople to document client history: conversations, phone calls, and meetings. Create a New Journal Entry, tag it to the Contact, type out the contents of the meeting. You can now view a Contact’s Journal entries from years ago. If you share your Journal and Contacts, anyone on your time can see your notes and client activity if you’re out.

Create a travel plan. When you do have to fly for business, you’ll usually have a pretty good idea of how much downtime you’ll have during your trip, so set some goals for your travel time before you leave. How long is the flight each way? How long will you be alone in your hotel room in the evening? Know what you want to accomplish during various parts of your trip. It isn’t set in stone—it’s just a guide. When you sit down in your airplane seat, you should know exactly what to do next. Maybe there’s a report you want to read or a proposal you want to write. Be ready to dive right in. Until I can turn on my computer, I generally do light reading as I catch my breath and get settled. I might even do a Sudoku puzzle. Then I get right to it. I never turn on the television in my hotel, since a quiet hotel room is a great place to bang out work.

Embrace the Smartphone. You don’t need to become a full-fledged Crackberry addict to enjoy the benefits of a smartphone. It shouldn’t hijack your life, but it can be a useful tool while you’re riding in a taxi or sitting at the gate. Use your downtime to keep up with email; it’s comforting to know it isn’t piling up while you’re away. A smart phone can also help you stay on top of things back at the office without playing phone tag and leaving voicemails all over the place.

Simplify with a docking station. Do you find yourself transferring files between a desktop computer and your laptop when you need to travel or bring work home? This was one of my biggest frustrations and time-wasters for many years. Unless your work requires some serious computer resources, you can probably stop using the desktop machine altogether. A docking station will allow you to keep your nice big monitor and full-size keyboard, but still be able to pop your computer out of the dock, slip it into your laptop bag, and have all your files in one place. It’s the best of both worlds.

Be determined to complete a task in less time. Sometimes we’re so busy looking for an extra thirty minutes to complete a task we don’t realize it could be done in ten. Make sure you aren’t over-researching, over-analyzing, or just plain over-thinking what you’re trying to do. Some fish will grow to fit the size of their tank, and tasks will do the same thing. If Step One of writing a report is always an hour of banging your head against the blank computer screen, it becomes the norm. Don’t fall into this trap. Evaluate your tasks and challenge yourself to get them done more quickly. If you had to have the report written by the end of the day instead of the end of the week, you would find a way to get it done. Tight deadlines don’t leave much time for banging your head on the computer. When a crisis pops up, rise to the challenge. Apply the same “never say die” attitude to your more routine tasks, and you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish. Focus, focus, focus. Give yourself ten minutes to concentrate on the task at hand. Once you commit your full energy to getting it done, you’ll be amazed at how things start zipping along.

Hold an efficiency meeting. We all know we can be more productive. When I ask, “What would you need to change about yourself in order to be more productive and increase sales?” everyone knows the answer. When I ask, “What would need to change in the office in order for you to be more productive?” everyone knows the answer. However, most wholesalers and their teams rarely take the time to discuss these issues and formulate solutions. If you haven’t had an “efficiency meeting” in a while, get it on your schedule. Vent your frustrations. Try different methods. Blow up a process. Get help when you need it. All of this effort will pay off handsomely in the way of increased client acquisition.

** To purchase online video tutorials on the above Outlook functions, please visit http://www.theproductivitypro.com/s_outlook-virtual-training-products.htm.

When I think of productivity tools for the modern business professional, one of the first that comes to mind is Outlook, Microsoft’s insanely useful personal management program. Outlook began life as an email client, and it’s still a great one; but in the past decade, it’s grown into so much more. These days, Outlook is also one of the chief ways that savvy business professionals manage their time and maximize their accessibility, from scheduling their meetings to keeping track of their personal contacts.

This past year we were blessed with a new version, the inventively-named Microsoft Outlook 2010. It’s chockfull of interesting and practical features–some of them completely new, and others refinements of features introduced in earlier versions. In this article, I’ll show you how to best take advantage of a few.

The Ribbon Interface
In Outlook 2007, Microsoft introduced the Ribbon Interface on some Outlook windows, primarily those associated with message views. Now it’s all over the place, including the Inbox itself. As part of the Microsoft Office Fluent User Interface, it’s designed to help you quickly find the commands you need.

As with Word and other Office programs (into which the Ribbon has been integrated long since), related tasks are grouped under tabs; with minor exceptions, menus are history. And here’s something exciting: you can also add customized tabs to your ribbons to enhance your personal work style and thus maximize your productivity.

See the rest of the article here.

Sign up today for Laura’s brand new webinar series for Microsoft Outlook 2010: http://theproductivitypro.com/s_outlook-virtual-training_1210.html

Join Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R), and Day-Timer on Monday, March 29 for a one-hour webinar on using Tasks in Microsoft Outlook. We have sessions for both Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2003. The Tasks module is third in a ten-part series on using Outlook effectively.

The classes on March 29 will cover:

Tasks—the Daily To-Do List, Create a New Task, Recurring Tasks, Regenerating Tasks, Remove Completed Tasks from the List, Change the Sort in Your To-Do Bar, Change Preferences, Capture an Email as a Task on the Task Pad, Collapse Your Tasks, Assigning Tasks, View by Person Responsible, Status Updates, Master Categories Lists, Tag with Category, Project Management, View Tasks for by Category/Project, Filter the View, Sort Tasks, Task Options, Paper To-Do Lists, Finding Tasks, Task Folders, Schedule Tasks from Your Calendar.

Sign up for the webinar.