New Delhi: A recent study showed that more than 60 per cent millennials in India feel anxious when they see unread emails in their inbox. It revealed that as many as two in five millennials get extremely uncomfortable if they haven’t been able to check their work email for three-four hours at a stretch. Millennials across the globe today are increasingly getting hooked on to the practice of keeping their inbox empty/near-empty at all times – popularly known as �Inbox Zero.
Niraj Ranjan Rout, co-founder and CEO of Hiver that conducted the survey, shares hacks how to reach �Inbox Zero’ in the most effortless way possible, and achieve greater productivity.
1. Make your Most Wanted/Most Unwanted list
Here are two approaches on how to categorise emails – The Eisenhower Matrix and the Brian Tracy’s Prioritisation Mechanism.
The Eisenhower Matrix
“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.” – Dwight Eisenhower
Eisenhower Matrix is a theory based on the urgency and importance of the task-is for you. Eisenhower Matrix prioritizes emails in the following manner:
Do (urgent and important)
Decide (important but not urgent)
Delegate (not important but urgent)
Delete (not important, not urgent)
This matrix helps working professionals achieve Inbox Zero quicker while helping them understand how much attention every task or email is worth.
Brian Tracy’s Prioritisation Mechanism
On the other hand, if you’re someone who thinks from the heart and attaches feelings to emails, Brian Tracy’s Prioritisation Mechanism is ideal for you. It is based on Mark Twain’s quote, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”
Using Twain’s philosophy, you can prioritize emails and tasks in the following ways:
Things you don’t want to do, but actually need to do.
Things you want to do, and actually need to do.
Things you want to do, but actually don’t need to do.
Things you don’t want to do, and actually don’t need to do.
Though the Eisenhower and Frog philosophy have the same objective, they differ in approach.
2. Say No to Uncle Spam
Inbox Zero’s Number #1 enemy is clutter and spammers contribute to that clutter. So, how do you keep spammers away? In situations where you’re required to share your emails, just share a shortened version of it. Use Capsulink to convert your email address to a short URL. Only people who really want to email you will go to this URL and access your email ID.
3. Don’t get trapped in the Zeigarnik Effect
If you’re currently stressed about emails, it’s probably because of the Zeigarnik Effect. In the late 1920s, a Lithuanian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik found out that incomplete tasks are remembered twice as much as completed ones, which leaves us in a state of anxiety. So, if you’re someone whose email management is not at par, here’s what you can do to handle it better: Pause incoming emails while you manage the others. You can use Boomerang for this. Feel free to play around with the �Inbox Pause’ – it makes Inbox Zero a stress-free affair. You can choose the time period, make exceptions to some emails-anything at all, the ball is in your box!
4. Filter the bad guys – focus on the good guys
Did you know that the urgency attached to a call is almost equal to the urgency attached to an email?
A study was carried out to evaluate the effects of email interruptions with the employees of Danwood Group. The findings suggested that employees would react to a mail within 6 seconds which is the same for a phone call. The recovery time (the amount of time the user takes to get back to original work after reacting to the email) was 64 seconds. But with more and more emails being received, the cumulative effect is significant. It is important to ask – is each and every email worthy of these precious seconds?
One of the best ways to concentrate on relevant emails is to filter or unsubscribe from those that aren’t. You can use Unroll.me for a mass unsubscribe. The more you filter unnecessary emails, the less distracted you are and the closer you get to Inbox Zero!
5. Sign off with purpose
Sign off with a signature that gives closure to people sending you emails (that don’t need to be sent to you). If you’re getting emails from colleagues about stuff that is not part of your job, you can sign off with a line “Received your mail. Please note, I’m not part of the design team, please send subsequent emails on this subject to the appropriate members.” Or, if you’re being pitched some freelance work you’re not interested in, then something like this could work – “Thanks for your mail. Unfortunately, this isn’t a fit for me.” The idea is to write a response that saves you from a string of follow-ups.
