What is your chosen strategy?
- Inbox zero, prioritise staying on top of email first and foremost, and you thereby ‘win‘ at the email game
- Farming email in between everything else – you stay in the game, but admit partial, daily failure
- Do what really matters first (including – if it’s a worthy priority – things within email), and let the rest of the email pile languish, even when it’s full of nice to haves and moderately importants
Genuinely curious to know.
I have been operating Option 2 for years, but am consciously shifting to Option 3 (with the associated feelings of guilt and ‘fuck you Email you irritating pervasive twat’ resentment.)
What about you?
Will McInnes 
I feel your pain! But I don’t think my email reading strategy falls in any of the above, although I found a solution that works for me…
I have folders for everything within my email. One for different clients/ projects/ internal/ blogs/ urgent etc.
So every morning, all I have to do is glance at my inbox and without reading them, simply move them all to different folders. Then, when I am concentrating on a particular project/client etc, I know where to look.
Obviously I read anything marked urgent first and nice-to-read stuff gets read later during breaks so I don’t get side-tracked. Hope that helps!
I aim for (1) (usually on a Friday). Rest of the week is nearer (2). I’m currently trying to have a couple of blitz sessions a day where I concentrate on email for a period of time and then shut Outlook and try and focus on other stuff. Trouble is my iPhone now posts notifications when stuff comes in. I know I could switch off the mail notifications but I can’t quite wean myself off that yet… 😉
I take a slightly anal five point approach. If I didn’t, email would drive me mad.
1. visit inbox once an hour
2. mercilessly delete crap ‘n’ spam to prevent irritating clutter
3. send a one line reply to quote requests and client comms along the lines of “Thanks for your message, I’ll get back to you by five today”
4. actually get back to them by five that day, thus impressing the f*** out of ’em
5. put everything else in a ‘deal with later’ folder and wade through it late Friday afternoon when everyone’s too stir-crazy to bother me much
1) Start telling everyone that you will never look at or reply to a cc’d doc
2) Send a letter/card/note to anyone you want a meaningful response from (client or colleague)
3) Have two email accounts (work and home)
4) Do as Caz does tells you 🙂