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Rapid Performance M O D U L E
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Managing Minutiae—E-Mail
E-mail has changed the way in which communication occurs. But for
many, its freedom and ease of use has created a daily deluge of
information overload.
Purpose This lesson will teach you how to begin the process
of creating a proactive and effective strategy for
managing e-mail.
Screen
When you screen e-mail, you make fast and consistent decisions
about how to handle each message. Similar to a medical triage unit,
you quickly sift through and assess which messages are critical and
which can wait.The key, however, is to establish a set of
measurements for identifying “vital signs” in e-mail. Many e-mail
programs use “rules” and “filters” to automate this measurement-
and-identification process.
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FOCUS: Achieving Your Highest Priorities
Rapid Performance M O D U L E
TM
Prioritize
Prioritizing is vital so that you deal first with the e-mail that matters
most.With screening rules in place, some of your inbox messages
will have had actions applied to them (such as prioritization flags,
changed font colors, or movement into a designated folders). Using
views (predetermined message arrangements or formats) and sorting
criteria (arranging items in an ascending or descending order), you
can organize your messages into similar groups.
How you combine screening and prioritizing will depend largely
upon your own creativity, familiarity with your e-mail program, and
business needs. Most e-mail programs contain a built-in prioritizing
hierarchy, allowing users to designate the importance of messages:
• Optional (low)
• Important (normal)
• Vital (high)
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Managing Minutiae—E-Mail
Ideally, once e-mail has passed through the screening process, only a
small percentage should be vital or optional.The bulk of your e-
mail should remain in the “Important” category.This bell-curve
analysis can be an important big-picture tool for making
adjustments to your screening strategy. For example, if the bulk of
your e-mail is constantly prioritized as low, you may want to
become more aggressive in your screening, or ask to be removed
from distribution lists.
Prioritizing isn’t about placing a value on the message itself, but
rather a way to order how you will spend your time.
Resolve
Resolving refers to the action you will perform on the e-mail itself.
Your goal should be to touch the e-mail only once and then apply
the FAD model: File, Act, or Delete.
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FOCUS: Achieving Your Highest Priorities
Rapid Performance M O D U L E
TM
File
Increasing storage capacity and decreasing storage costs make it easy
to store all e-mail for possible future reference. Creating a single
archive folder is usually sufficient for expired messages. (Setting up
complex levels of local folders is a somewhat antiquated habit derived
from the layout of physical storage cabinets.) With sophisticated search
engines now a common part of e-mail programs, information
retrieval from one large folder can be accomplished as quickly as
hunting through a large series of cascading file folders (although,
depending upon your job requirements or archiving processes, a
folder hierarchy may make better sense).
The important thing is to get the e-mail out of your inbox every day.
When you file an e-mail message, make sure to make an
appointment with yourself if you know you will need the material
on a specific date. Immediately add a task to your task list or
calendar that directs you to retrieve the information at the
appropriate time.
Act
Much e-mail requires a particular action on the part of the recipient.
Because the e-mail in the inbox has already been prioritized, if an
urgent action is required, you can accomplish it immediately without
fear that some other, more pressing e-mail, is waiting. Immediately
add non urgent actions to a task list or planning calendar.Then take
the e-mail out of the inbox and file it for future reference.
Delete
Some of the e-mail you receive has no value as a stored document.
Remove one-word replies such as “Thanks!” and other such e-mails
from the inbox and delete them. If a message cannot be categorized
as a task, an appointment, or a piece of relevant data, you should
probably delete it.
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Managing Minutiae—E-Mail
Case Study
Christine, a mid level manager at a technology company, has been
spending more and more time dealing with her e-mail. As she
opens her inbox, she notices a large number of new, unopened
items in addition to those she read yesterday, but didn’t have time to
resolve. She begins at the top of her list (her e-mail is sorted by the
date received) and begins reading each item.The first e-mail is a
request from a member of her team for time off. Even though it
isn’t urgent, it needs to get done. She leaves her e-mail and spends
10 minutes approving the request using the company’s online
system. Returning to her e-mail, she deletes the message and moves
on to the next one—an e-mail from a customer requesting
technical information. Because responding to this one will take
some time, she makes a mental note to get back to it and leaves it
in her inbox as a reminder.
Ninety minutes later, Christine takes a look at what she’s
accomplished. She’s managed to open most of her new e-mail. She
would have gotten to all of it, but the last one she opened had an
urgent request that took the rest of her morning to complete. She’s
frustrated, however, that her inbox still has a lot of opened and
unopened mail. She knows the messages that were opened had
some importance (otherwise she would have thrown them away),
but she’ll need to go back and reread them in order to follow up.
Running off to her morning meeting, she discovers too late that
she received an action item she either missed or didn’t open yet.
Feeling foolish and unprepared, she promises herself that she’ll come
up with a better system for handling her e-mail.
Two weeks later (after an e-mail effectiveness workshop), Christine
has taken control of her inbox. First, she plans preset times in her
calendar to deal with e-mail.This allows her to work without
interruption and clear out her inbox each day. Using rules and
filters, Christine then identifies key indicators that would typically
6 © 2002 Franklin Covey Co. For personal use only. Duplication is prohibited.
FOCUS: Achieving Your Highest Priorities
Rapid Performance M O D U L E
TM
© 2002 Franklin Covey Co. For personal use only. Duplication is prohibited.
7
Managing Minutiae—E-Mail
8 © 2002 Franklin Covey Co. For personal use only. Duplication is prohibited.
FOCUS: Achieving Your Highest Priorities
Rapid Performance M O D U L E
TM
Rapid Performance M O D U L E
TM
© 2002 Franklin Covey Co. For personal use only. Duplication is prohibited.
11
Managing Minutiae—E-Mail
12 © 2002 Franklin Covey Co. For personal use only. Duplication is prohibited. SKU #74065 RPM