Take Control of Your Email

Like most business owners, I often feel like I spend at least half my day dealing with e-mail. For our February issue, we asked our readers to give us their best tips for taking control of your email, before it controls you. Here are some of my favorites. “I limit times I check email. Ideally I check in twice per day, 11am and 4pm. After I check my email, I prioritize the action I will take with each email into one of five categories: urgent (address immediately); critical (respond within 24 hours); strategic issue (requires research, planning, or meeting, respond when information is prepared); irrelevant (discard). Everything else is categorized as delegate. I forward those emails to my assistant, who responds or forwards as required, takes the necessary action, and advises me of the results. I have created email folders for each category so that I can control my time and my schedule, stay focused on what’s important rather than being distracted by what shows up in my inbox, and spend the majority of my thinking and acting on strategic goals and business initiatives.” —Rita F. Weiss, president, Pinnacle Consulting Services, Mt. Kisco, NY “I have created dozens of sub-folders within my Outlook inbox. I then use Outlook’s rules and alerts tools, which precipitates an action to be taken on each incoming email based on whether it meets the rule criteria. For example, if you subscribe to a newsletter that is informative, but not time sensitive, a rule can be created to automatically place all emails from that source into a specific subfolder. Those emails can be reviewed at a later time. In addition, alerts can be set up to display a pop-up notification and sound for emails that are received from priority senders or messages that contain defined key words in the subject line. This assists with easily identifying priority messages.” —Mark J. Marino, Director, Emergency Management, MediSys Health Network, Jamaica, NY “Many of my clients who believed I was available 24/7 (mainly because I use a BlackBerry), soon realized that I only respond back to issues during normal business hours (9 to 5). I use the “Do not send before” tool in Outlook to delay the message send until business hours the following day. An example of how this works involves a client of mine who would e-mail me at all hours of the day and night. Early in our business relationship, if I saw a message he sent me at 11pm, I would respond immediately because I wanted to excel in customer service. Today, when he e-mails me, he knows not to expect an immediate response if his e-mail was sent after hours. By implementing this idea, I have greatly reduced the amount of time that work eats into my personal life and have grown my company's reputation at the same time.” —Joseph Glass, president, Credit Cards NJ, Teaneck, NJ