Email – You’re Doing it Wrong

It’s not hip. It’s not Web 2.0 but email is still the primary method of communication of almost every internet user worldwide. Yet after popular use for over a decade it’s stunning how many users still can’t grasp how to properly use and manage email.

Just so we are clear I’m not talking about web based email accounts like Yahoo and Google. This article concerns your corporate email account. To be more precise many of the issues I deal with in this piece are unique to Microsoft Outlook because it is the dominant client email application in the Microsoft world in which I operate. Regardless of the backend system (POP3/IMAP/Exchange) these tips will help you reassess the purpose and practice of email.

Email is a communication medium. This is such an obvious statement that it seems silly to state it. However, the sad truth is that most email users have forgotten the primary purpose of email and tried to extend its functions to the point of being inefficient, ineffective, and unusable.

The Problem

Let’s begin with an story. I contact my friend Bob and ask him for some information about a client and a upcoming meeting. Bob then proceeds to dial into his voicemail and sort through 208 messages in order to retrieve the pertinent information.

That’s lunacy you say. Who would use voicemail as a warehouse for that information? It’s inefficient, not very reliable, and voicemail just wasn’t meant to be used that way. Correct. Voicemail was meant to be a communication medium not a database. Bob’s use of voicemail in this manner is indisputably insane, yet we commonly accept these same practices when applied to email.

Email is such an efficient communication technology that users have outsourced many database type functions to their email client.

Allow me to provide some common examples of this abuse.
1) The user that has 1346 emails in their inbox because they can’t bear not being able to find an email or bothered with sorting them into folders.
2) The user that cannot empty 1874 sent items because they may need to be referenced at some unspecified future date.
3) The user that manages 3 archived PST files because you never know what information you might need from 7 years ago.

You might agree that these examples show an inefficient use of email but you don’t see any issue worth solving yet. Allow me to elaborate.

All three practices are going to contribute to very poor Outlook performance and likely corruption of the user’s PST file. PST files can be nasty. The larger they become the more likely they are to corrupt (1Gb is dangerous trust me) and they are so unstable that Microsoft will tell you that the simple transferring of a PST file over a network can corrupt the file.

The conundrum is that the practice of using email as a database contributes to the very problem a user is trying to solve. Namely the user is trying to maintain all of this information for future use by using a method that can cause the entire file to become unusable! (Not to mention that 90% of the time these PST’s are located on the local hard drive and we all know hard drives never fail.)

Before you start with the “but there are legitimate needs to backup email argument”, I agree. If your organization has a business cause to archive email or is under a legal or compliance obligation then you should absolutely backup your email but only by doing so at the organization level, not the user level. Backup your Exchange database or subscribe to a 3rd party email archiving service. If email archiving is an essential then spend the money and do it right. If it is NOT essential then don’t use faulty half measures.

The Fix

The most frustrating part of this entire scenario is that this problem is so easy to fix. You simply need a system for managing the information and your email.

Start with the 3 folder method.

Your email client should only contain 3 folders. Action, Hold, Archive.

1. Action – Everytime you have a receive an email decide whether you can respond in under 1 minute. If you can, then respond immediately. If you cannot then file it into the Action folder to be processed ASAP.
2. Hold – If the email concerns an active situation but you are awaiting response or more information then file it into the Hold folder.
3. Archive – If you need to keep it, file the message into Archive.
4. *Working Projects – I have extended the original formula to include folders for Working projects that are not ready for archiving because I need to track the ongoing communication.

In addition try using the following rules to make your email more productive. (via Michael Hyatt)

Empty your Inbox Everyday.
Don’t get bogged down, keep moving – Do,Defer,Delegate.
Use email rules to help presort incoming mail.

To replace the other functions that were once assigned to your email I recommend a combination of the following.

• Vigorously maintain your Contacts/Address Book
• Vigorously maintain your Calendar
• Always save attachments to the appropriate folder and delete the original email. You can always include any pertinent information in an accompanying text file.
• Use Evernote (personal fav) or OneNote to manage any quick reference information that you might need.
• Use Project Management software or a client database application to maintain tasks, info, etc…

Managing your email takes discipline but the reward of having a organized system is greatly improved productivity and a safeguard against a catastrophic loss. Email is a communication medium and you should use the right tool for the right job.

Related posts:

1. Turning links into a library with Diigo
2. Organizing my digital life for 2010
3. Branding and Staying Power in the largest social network ever

Tagged as: Email, Productivity