Michael Lineberger, author of Master Your Workday Now!: Proven Strategies to Control Chaos, Create Outcomes, & Connect Your Work To Who You Really Are, specializes in organization. Here is a quick look at what the “Efficiency Guru” promises will help you control your chaotic inbox.
“I assert that 80 to 90% of our new work these days comes in through e-mail,” Lineberger says. “Our inbox is not designed to be a task-management system, but that’s what we use it for. E-mail doesn’t have the tools to manage, prioritize, delegate, assign, or date tasks, which is what we need. All it has is a flag. It isn’t enough.”
He continues by recognizing most of our dirty little e-mail secrets—we’re too afraid to lose an e-mail, so we just allow our inboxes to fill up until our IT department rather freaks out and demands we delete some older e-mails, or we reach capacity and are forced to hit the dreadful delete button ourselves. Besides pushing our e-mail servers to the limit, this is highly ineffective. As Lineberger also mentions, rarely does the subject line have much to do with the e-mail, so when we save every last one of them, we’re forced to go back and open each and every one until we find what we’re looking for. Even when using the search filter, the seek-and-find process in your inbox can be cumbersome.
Lineberger suggests moving your e-mail messages into categories to help manage your workflow. Although he warns in his book that it will take some considerable time to set-up time, by dividing messages into categories, the benefits are well worth it. And, by converting all your messages into a task and filing them, your in box becomes tension-free. “All the action requests are in your task system and you can file away your inbox and it becomes clean.”
He suggests three main categories—critical now, opportunity now, and over the horizon.
- Critical now are those tasks and e-mails that must be handled today. (No, not everything must be handled today.) He recommends there should be no more than five, and they should be checked every hour.
- Opportunity now are those that you might be able to get to today, but aim to handle within 10 days. These should be kept to 20. He recommends checking these at least once a day.
- Over the horizon are those that can wait longer than 10 days. This is where you want the bulk of your e-mails and projects. He recommends checking this folder at least once a week.
For more information about Michael Lineberger and his publications, take a look at his reviews on amazon.com.
