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Do You Control Your Email or Does Your Email Control You

Written by: Glenn Ebersole

Article Overview: Recently while discussing time management issues with my business coaching clients and others, the topic of email and the amount of time we all spend dealing with business (and non-business) email at work. Those discussions gave impetus to this article. Do you ever wonder how many email boxes are in use by organizations all over the world? 100 million? 200 million? According to statistics I read in a recent article, there were an estimated 225 million email boxes in use in 2005 by organizations in the world. Did I hear someone say WOW!

Do You Control Your Email or Does Your Email Control You

“Do You Control Your Email or Does Your Email Control You?"
By: J. Glenn Ebersole, Jr., Founder & Chief Executive of J. G. Ebersole Associates and The Renaissance Group ™

Recently while discussing time management issues with my business coaching clients and others, the topic of email and the amount of time we all spend dealing with business (and non-business) email at work. Those discussions gave impetus to this article.

Do you ever wonder how many email boxes are in use by organizations all over the world? 100 million? 200 million? According to statistics I read in a recent article, there were an estimated 225 million email boxes in use in 2005 by organizations in the world. Did I hear someone say WOW!

How much time each day do you use email in your business? One hour? Two hours? Three or more hours? Or is it the case that you think you know, but do not really know? A typical business user spends just over 2 hors using email each day. That means that for a “traditional” 8-hour workday, people in business are spending 25% of their time dealing with email. Now that is something to think about.

How often do you check your email at work each day? Once or twice each day? Three of four times a day? More than 5 times each day? Recent statistics indicate 53% of business users check email at least 6 times a day. And 4% of business users check email constantly throughout the day. All in all, business users spend 49 minutes per day “managing” email accounts.

Did any of these statistics surprise you? Did any sound too true for you? The fact of the matter is that dealing with email in business is a huge consumer of time. And therefore we need to ask ourselves if we are controlling email or if email is controlling us? We all need to manage our email activities in an efficient manner. Here are 6 tips to help you manage your email activity.

+ Select a specified time of day to read and respond to your email, rather than checking it constantly throughout the day.

+ Delete all junk mail and spam, as well as copies of messages that are of no interest to you.

+ Forward email messages that are of interest or better handled by others. And don’t keep a copy of the forwarded messages.

+ Respond immediately to all emails that can be answered quickly.

+ File the email only if it is truly vital to your tasks or projects.

+ Put emails on hold when you are not able to respond immediately. Develop and use a system to follow-up in a timely manner and use that system to handle emails put on hold.

If you need advice on time management in other areas of your business, please contact Glenn Ebersole through www.renaissanceman4u.com or by email at jgecoach@aol.com
today!

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