Scott Martin

E-mail has become the favorite communication method these days.   We now send/receive e-mails on our phones, probably more than we use them to make a phone call.  However, e-mail has taken away some productivity by users who do not use the tool effectively.  I have colleges that seem to brag that they get a large number of e-mails, and then complain that it takes to long to go through them.  Having supported a fair number of users, here are some of the top things that I have noticed among users that can save time spent with e-mail.

• Use folders to help organize e-mail.   This seems very obvious, but I have noticed large number of people who do not utilize folders to help keep the e-mail organized.
• Use salutation(s) to help redundant typing.  In addition to the normal contact information normally placed at the bottom I noticed a few years back I kept typing “Thanks, Scott” as the last items being typed in almost all of my e-mail.  Although it did not take that much time for one e-mail, having to respond to 100’s can save quite a bit of time.  In addition multiple salutations can be setup for different types of messages being sent.Use meeting requests instead of typing information in an e-mail.  This is a huge timesaver for not only yourself but everyone that receives the request.  Performing this task will automatically place it in your calendar and when the recipients ‘accept’ it will be placed in there calendar without having to take the time to cut/paste or type it in manually. 
• Rules.  Setting up rules for incoming e-mail can be extremely valuable in organizing e-mail.  I have setup rules to file newsletters into a folder that can I can view at a later time.

These are only a few helpful hints.  Take a little time and review some of the functionality of your e-mail program.  I’m sure you can find these and many others that can help better manage e-mail time. 

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 13th, 2007 at 5:42 pm and is filed under IT Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.