Show Notes

A lesson in email management from the Greek Gods.

In this episode of the Service Game podcast, host Julie Krieger delves into effective email management strategies, drawing parallels with the tale of Sisyphus from Greek mythology. Julie shares practical tips and hacks for managing emails efficiently across platforms like Outlook, Gmail, and Apple Mail. Key topics include the two-minute rule, using email platforms' built-in functionalities, setting up email templates, and the importance of scheduling apps. Julie also discusses the concept of Inbox Zero and offers strategies for managing multiple inboxes. Listeners will learn how to limit mental clutter, achieve greater productivity, and maintain a sense of organisation and calm.

00:00 Introduction to the Service Game Podcast

01:04 Email Management and Greek Mythology

02:54 Practical Email Management Tips

05:46 Advanced Email Hacks and Tools

10:25 Inbox Zero and Filing Strategies

16:19 Managing Multiple Inboxes

23:57 Conclusion and Contact Information

Pleexy - https://www.pleexy.com/

Zapier - https://zapier.com/

Calendly – https://calendly.com

Acuity - https://acuityscheduling.com/

 http://onsomble.com.au/

Show transcript

Welcome to the Service Game podcast. Brought to you by Onsomble. I'm your host, Julie Krieger. For the past 14 years, I've been helping associations to grow and thrive, establishing systems, writing policies and procedures, implementing membership and sponsorship strateg. Setting up operations, undertaking complete governance restructures, developing strategies and advising CEOs, presidents and boards.

I am driven to support the hardworking people who give their time, heart and soul in the service of their members and in the pursuit of the greater good.  Join me as we delve deep into this innovative, creative, values based and mission driven thing. I call the service game.  Let's get going with today's episode.

 Hello, hello, and welcome to today's episode of the service game podcast. Thank you for joining me again. Today we are talking about email management and the lessons that we can learn from Greek mythology.  That's right. Stay tuned for more  emails,  emails, the very definition of busy work. Some might say pointless busy work. You can lose whole days to your inbox. But still feel like you've achieved nothing. And by and large, that's because you probably haven't achieved anything of significance or anything that's actually going to drive you towards your goals. The interesting thing about emails is that they are by nature all about the needs of the person who has sent the email to you, not very much about your needs.

So it's one good reason. Not to live life by whether or not we've dealt with every last email before we do the important stuff.  The other interesting thing about emails is that they never stop. It's like digging a hole in sand. The more you dig, the The more sand falls in the hole and fills it right back up again,  or more specifically, and back to the relevance of the title of today's episode.

It's a bit like the tale of Sisyphus. He was a Greek king in ancient Greek mythology, who for his sins on earth was sentenced by Hades to an eternity. of pushing a boulder up a hill,  only to find that just as he got to the top, the boulder rolled down to the bottom again, and he had to start again. And this was his fate for the whole of eternity.

And I just feel like there is no better analogy.  For the email system that we are all tied to, sentenced to, perhaps, for the rest of our working lives.  Here we are today, we're going to talk about using the system that you use well. we will talk about some of the hacks and tips that you can employ. Are you ready? To make your use of your email system much more productive.  I'm going to reveal to you the single best hack that I have ever learned  to make managing emails productive.  We'll talk about the inbox zero myth.  We'll talk about managing multiple inboxes at once. And finally, when is the best time to handle your emails?  Let's dig in.

 I'm going to talk about some of the really practical, usable, implementable  tips that you can take out of this and employ in your own day to day working life to help you manage your own email. onslaught with more productivity in mind. So whether you use Outlook, Gmail, Apple Mail, or any of the other email platforms, they all come with a slew of great functions.

Most of which most of us barely use.  Here are a few of the simple ones that I use to inboxes clean and tidy. And in doing that, That also helps to keep my headspace clean and tidy.  So you can do simple things like when an email needs action, but you don't want to action it straight away. And there's that two minute rule, you know, if it's going to take you less than two minutes to handle it, handle it straight away.

If it's more than that, then you want to schedule it.  So to do that, most of these email platforms will have the ability for you to click and drag an email into the task section of your email platform. Once it's there, you can then assign it a due date. And in some instances, you can even schedule it for a time in your diary, or assign a duration, the amount of time you think it's going to take to handle that particular task.   What that does is enable you to take that email out of your inbox today and send it to sleep for a period of time. You can nominate when you actually want to see that again and it will pop back into your inbox at that time. So for example, if somebody has said, don't forget that. Next week when we meet on Tuesday afternoon, I want you to bring along something to the meeting.  You could hit sleep on that until an hour before the meeting and then it will pop up in your inbox as a fresh email at that time and remind you that you've got to take it to the meeting in an hour's time. For example, it's  a great function and one that I use all the time. Converting emails into a calendar event, so  inviting yourself or inviting others to an event in your calendar at a time that you specify and dragging and dropping that email into that time slot is also super helpful and it's dealt with then. It's done and it's gone.

Most email systems will also allow you to set up email templates. So if you find yourself responding to the same emails over and over again,  Create a template out of that response and save it, name it so that it's easy to find and locate and then when you need to use it you just have to click on that email, up it pops pre populated, you amend it to personalize it to the situation  and away you go, saving heaps of time. If you find yourself in a position where you're asking multiple people in an email chain for their opinion on something,add a poll to your email. It just makes the process of getting opinion and consensus so much more efficient and really easy for the reader to understand as well what you're asking. Less likely to get missed in the body of email text.  And again, most email systems will have an inbuilt polling system. You can just click on the option, write your question, and include your options for responses. Click go, and it adds it into the body of your email. Then when the recipients get it, it's like doing a quiz. They just click, you know, yes, no, maybe, or whatever the options might be. And it's done, and you get the responses.  Similarly, if you find yourself often wrangling with emails back and forth, simply trying to set up times to meet, get yourself a scheduling app like Calendly or Acuity. There are plenty out there, but those are two that are fairly commonly used. And what they allow you to do is sync all of your calendars. into one system and then it provides you a link that you can drop into an email that allows the person who receives your email  to see when you're available. And they can actually go ahead from that point and schedule a meeting with you directly. So it just saves that whole, are you free on Tuesday at 12? No, but I can do 12 But what about if we do three? Nope, can't do three. I've got to pick up the kids, whatever it might be. We've all had those email chains back and forth and they're a pain. So by using a system like Calendly, for example,  I can just respond to somebody with, yes, it would be great to meet. Click this link to my calendar. and schedule in a time that suits you best.  And then we're done and then I get an email saying you've got an appointment with this person  at X time and it's in my diary and it's in my emails.I can't miss it. And it's taken so little time and made everybody's lives much more productive.

What about when you send an email to somebody and you're waiting for a response from them?  So some systems have inbuilt reminders. For example, if you use Gmail, you'll find that a certain number of days after you've sent an email to someone, it will pop up in your email inbox again, saying it's been three days since you asked for something from this person. Do you want to follow them up? Fabulous, and there are settings that you can set that up in.  Other ways to manage that  I've seen in practice,  people cc ing themselves into an email for which they need a response.  And then they have a rule set up in the background that automatically forwards that cc into a separate folder, and they can easily then see in one space any email for which they're waiting on a response.  You could set up an awaiting responses folder and drag and drop individual emails into that.  You can shift them into a diary event or a task so that you can follow that up on a particular date if you haven't had a response by that time.

This is just a scratch of the surface of the functionality of email systems, but suffice to say they are chock full of functionality and a quick google of how to do things in your email management system will have you finding efficiencies in no time at all.  Many of them actually have a help section or a tip section that will help you to find those productivity hacks and implement them really quickly and easily.    

What about the issue of filing emails? Where do you put them?  Are you one of those people that has 2000 unread emails in their inbox just dunno how you do that, but a lot of people do.   Or maybe at the other end of that spectrum, you are the sort of person who has. 50 subfolders set up with subfolders underneath each of them and you   and meticulously file everything away into a folder that makes complete sense to you.  Either way,  I suggest that  systems either waste time or waste headspace. The problem with a million subfolders is that it takes a lot of time firstly to set them up, secondly to decide where to put an email once you've dealt with it,  and thirdly trying to find that email when you need to find it again if you ever do. Most of the time we don't, but sometimes you do. And locating which folder you very logically slotted it into way back when you dealt with it can take minutes of your time or longer  and it's a pain in the butt.

Years ago I read a book by Dermot Crowley called Smart Work and I highly recommend it. It is no exaggeration to say that this book changed my life. Thank you. Or at the very least, it changed the way I work and my productivity with regard to emails as a result.  So the single biggest hack that I can share with you is, don't use subfolders. I've got in my multitude of inboxes, and I manage quite a few,  for personal, for business, for clients, I've got probably at least half a dozen on the go at any given time.  None of them have a succession of subfolders, not one. I've got the system generated ones that sit there and I use predominantly, obviously the inbox, that's where everything lands, the sent folder, the deleted folder and the junk or the trash. and then, in addition to that, I create one other folder, and I call it Dealt With.  It's such a simple system. That eliminates a whole load of mental clutter and a whole heap of time. I deal with an email and then I drag it, if I want to keep it, I drag it into dealt with. And then if I ever need to look for that email again, I simply go into that one folder and search. And I can search on any of those usual parameters that you can use. Who sent it to you, by date, by topic, keywords, whatever. And generally speaking. They're easy to locate, way, way easier than if you had to search in individual folders. As I said, no exaggeration to say that it absolutely changed the way I worked and changed my level of productivity for the better.  when I started implementing this one simple hack.     

So what about this concept of  inbox zero?  concept is for some just a dream and maybe for some of you it only happens When you're going to take a holiday, and you magically get everything down to no or very few emails sitting in your inbox. Maybe it never has happened, and you just simply can't imagine it ever happening.

Should you aim for it? Yes, I think we should.  But, it doesn't have to mean that everything is done.  And that's where this myth exists. Inbox 0 is great.  Don't confuse Inbox 0 with I've done everything I possibly have to do. It does not mean that. What it means is that everything has either been done,  deleted,  delegated,

And you've engaged one of the inbox management tools that is inbuilt into the system you're using, as we spoke about before, to deal with it.  If you haven't dealt with it straight away, you haven't deleted it because you don't need to do anything with it and it's junk, you haven't sent it to someone else because you're delegating the task, and you're deferring it,  Load it into your calendar, snooze it to a future date, add it to a task or file it into your files.

You're not your email files. I mean, your actual business files, whatever it is you want to do with it. Take that action now so that at some point in the future, that email will pop into your consciousness. As and when you need it.  You're not saying it's done, but you're saying for this point in time, it is handled. And that handling process has taken you seconds, not more than that, just seconds.

Whatever the method you use to do this, the main thing is that It has been dealt with in such a way that you don't have to try to remember it. It will automatically remind you. It will automatically put into your inbox, your calendar, your task list, or whatever way you've handled it, as and when you need to deal with it.

That is the concept of Inbox Zero. And it is ultimately aimed at having you achieve a sense of calm and organisation.  And that's something that the inbox can really quickly strip away from you.    What if, like me, you find yourself managing multiple inboxes at once?  Most people nowadays will have more than one inbox. Maybe you've got a personal email address and a work address. At a minimum, I would say most people have that. You might also have one for your volunteer role on the board. Thank you so much. Maybe you've got a portfolio career and you have inboxes for multiple roles or you work across multiple clients as I do, and you manage just a whole abundance of email inboxes.   It's a bit of a bugger and there is no easy solution to make this seamless, but I have three key tips.  Firstly, inbuilt into  your email system, will be your corresponding calendars, and your task management systems, and your contacts. You'll all be familiar with those areas within your inbox.  Make sure that you add all of your calendars into the system that you're using. So for example, Outlook,  if you use Outlook, you have the capacity to add calendars for every inbox that you manage or every email address that you manage, including Gmail accounts, add them all, add each account to that platform  and make sure that when you're viewing your calendar, You've overlapped them  so that you can see them all on one screen. You can color code them, which is what I do. And then on one screen, on one view, I can see every calendar  that I am responsible for all in one view. And I can, in doing that really easily, see the gaps or see areas where there is an issue. And it helps, of course, for scheduling.  Likewise, if you're using Calendly or Acuity or one of those scheduling apps, Make sure to link all of your calendars into that system. It will only work if your availability shows accurately. And to do that, it needs to be reading every single one of your calendars.

Tip number two is to sync your tasks into the one space.  in the course of my daily work, I work in Gmail, I work in Outlook, and I work across, as I've said, multiple email addresses and inboxes.  Across various clients, I use a few different systems to track tasks, and that's not my choice, but it's the way we work. So if the client is using, Teams, for example, we use teams. If the client wants to use monday. com or Google workspace or whatever system, then that's what we use and we integrate with the client, but then in the background set up a system that means. All of that syncs into one space for each person.  So for me, I love using Microsoft To Do.

I've mentioned this in previous posts over the years, but I just find it such a simple system to use for my day to day task management. It's got this fabulous, nifty option to create what's called My Day within that system. So I've got folders set up in that for each client or each area of work. And I put due dates in there and it'll automatically populate today with anything that's set as a due date for today.

But in addition to that I can also just click on individual tasks in any of the groups and add them to my day. So I just find that a super simple way. I can then drag and drop them into order of priority and then I just have to go ahead and do the work.  Plan your work, your work, your plan!  So I use Microsoft to do, to do that, and I've set this up using different programs to help it integrate across all of the other systems that we use for our clients.

So  whether you use Asana or Teams or whatever it might be, you'll have tasks in multiple places potentially,  but using systems like Zapier to create content. Connectivity. Another one that I use is called Pleexy.  And I'll put links to these in the show notes. You can have them all sync into the one place.  And then doing that, you know, that when you look at that list, it's got everything on it. that you need to do. Everything that you're responsible for.  Again, it's all about limiting mental clutter and to know that as long as you capture your tasks in the right way, they will all appear in the one place, ready for you to organize your day.

The third tip Is to be really disciplined about when you go into each inbox. When to handle emails.

If you listen to episode nine about planning,  you will have heard me talk through the rocks pebbles sand analogy of task and time management.  Emails are sand. Do not load sand into your jar first.  Maybe take a moment, go back and listen to Episode 9 if you haven't done so already.  It's a simple analogy about being the most productive you can be with all of the tasks that you have on your list.

You absolutely need to set time to handle your emails,  but it is not when you are at your most productive. It is not the time when you will be predisposed to focusing more deeply and being able to tick things off your big goal list.   Set the time to manage your emails, and it might be that you do that twice a day or three times a day, it might even be once a day, but set time for it. Lock it in. If you need to pop it in the diary  and then resist the urge to look at them all day long,  thinking that you're being productive by handling an email here or an email there because you're not. Flitting from one thing to the other, as many studies have shown, takes you a long time  to refocus.

So once you, once you shift your attention from what you're working on, it takes you many, many minutes, to. Switch back into the mode of paying full, deep attention to what you were originally working on once you've been distracted. So we want to minimize the distraction from emails as much as possible.

For that reason, turn off notifications. Stop the dinging. Stop the images that slide in from the side of your screen saying, Hey, you've got mail.  Turn it all off because they're not doing you any favours.

When you sit down to plan the week ahead, for example, whether you do that on a Friday or on a Sunday afternoon or on a Monday morning,  plan chunks of time for you to do the work that's going to help you achieve the big goals.  And again, have a listen back to episode nine to hear about that cascading planner concept. Of starting with your year, working down to quarters, months, weeks, days. Handling emails as they come in, according to other people's deadlines and other people's priorities, is not the way you are going to achieve your goals by the end of the year.  Block out the time for the work that matters and do that first. Turn off the emails in the meantime,  and definitely turn off notifications.      So those are just a few handy hints for managing your inbox or inboxes most efficiently and most effectively. Like I said, a lot of the how to can be googled really easily, but if you need a hand, you can reach out to us. You can find us at onsomble. com. au  Or you can email us at thrive at onsomble. com.au  and we will be more than happy to help you set up some systems that will help you be as productive as you possibly can and more importantly achieve the goals that you've set for yourself and for your organisation. That's what it's all about at the end of the day. That and staying sane in the process.

Thank you so much for listening again. Until next time.   Thanks for listening to the Service Game Podcast by Ensembl. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe and write us a quick review. It helps us to reach more people and we really appreciate your support.  To access our downloadable resources and tailored support options designed for NFPs, head to onsomble.

com. au or look us up on social media. You'll find all our links in the show notes for this episode. Chat next time.