Becoming Effective – Touch an Email Once
I try to spend as much time as possible reading self development books and listen to self development audio recordings. Not only will they keep me inspired but I am also constantly learning new things (as well as being reminded of things that I did know but somehow forgot). One of the subjects that they cover is “time management” and how to best use your time and effort.
Every single day I receive a lot of emails. They can be either promotional, educational or questions and comments from readers, business partners and friends. All in all they will add up and I’ve found myself using way too much time reading and re-reading these emails. I’ve been particularly bad at spending time on re-reading things like Ezines that I have subscribed to.
One way to becoming more productive in your day is to start cutting away all the things that you spend your time on that aren’t doing you any good. For me one of these things is reading emails more than ones without really doing anything with them.
I believe that Tim Ferries mentions this in depth in his book The 4 Hour Work Week, but if you strive to only touch an email once you can really improve your effectiveness and free up a lot of time that can be spent doing better and more productive things (like increasing your profits).
At first I found this really hard to do because I was in the habit of doing things in another way. But after some time this has become a habit as well and I’ve made it a goal for myself to only touch an email once. Read it, delete it, act on it or archive it. If it is not important enough to be read now it probably isn’t important enough to be read at all.
If you find yourself in the same situation that I did you might be thinking out loud: “I don’t have time to read it all or act on everything when sitting down to read emails”! If this is the case then maybe you shouldn’t be reading emails at that particular time OR you should try to make reading emails into a task that needed more of your time. If you don’t have that time I suggest that you do as I did; unsubscribe from a lot of the daily, weekly or monthly emails that you receive. If they’re not valuable enough to spend your time on then why even fill up your email box with it?
I know this new habit has given me a lot more free time to spend on producing profits and I hope that it will do the same for you.
Make it a great day,
Mikael
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All though this “read emails only once” way of doing things might work, there’s also a real danger in it:
More than once I have worked for a boss that had the habit of quickly reading an email only once, and replying immediately. Which in turn often had the result that his replies wasn’t clear and well formulated, and I in return had to reply back asking for further details or clarifications.
I do see an idea behind the phrase “if it’s not worth reading now, then it probably never will be”. And all though you might be saving some of your time right now, there is a strong possibility that if you don’t do it properly you’ll end up wasting someone elses time, or your own time in the long haul when you later on have to reply back with an explanation of what you actually meant in your first mail.
Søren, I hear what you’re saying but I believe that the problem is with your boss and not with the concept of only reading emails once. Any work that is hasted will often be of poor quality but what I am saying has nothing to do with haste. What I am saying is that doing the same thing over because you couldn’t, wouldn’t or just didn’t think and act upon it the first time will simply be a waste of time.
People that can’t, won’t or just don’t work this way will just have to settle with wasting time and I that is a personal choice. This concept works great for me and I know that it does for a lot of other people. But I’m sure that it won’t apply to everyone. One a few things in life does…
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