Week 46 Focus — Email Management
Focus Question: What is the state of your inbox?

Description/research
The Front Blog indicates that “The average worker spends 28 percent of their work week on email, more than 11 hours a week! With the average person sending and receiving 124 work emails every day, or 620 emails every week, we're spending an average of 1.1 minutes on each email.” https://frontapp.com/blog/2018/07/20/how-much-time-are-you-spending-on-email/
 
“The average professional spends 28% of the workday reading and answering email, according to a McKinsey analysis. For the average full-time worker in America, that amounts to a staggering 2.6 hours spent, and 120 messages received per day.”
– How to Spend Way Less Time on Email Every Day – Harvard Business Review by Matt Plummer 2019
https://hbr.org/2019/01/how-to-spend-way-less-time-on-email-every-day
 
According to Matt Plummer - The team at Zarvana realized professionals could save more than one hour and 21 minutes per day by addressing these five time suckers. Here’s what Matt Plummer shares in his Harvard Business Review Article (https://hbr.org/2019/01/how-to-spend-way-less-time-on-email-every-day):
 
According to Zarvana our time is spent in five main areas, taking up the following time:
 
“1. Over checking email wastes 21 min/day.
2. Full inboxes waste 27 min/day.
3. Using folder to organize and find emails wastes 14 min/day.
4. Archiving emails into many folders with mouse wastes 11 min/day.
5. Reading and processing irrelevant emails wastes 8 min/day.
(Source Matt Plummer and Zarvana – in HBR article). The article he has written provides a lot of detail around just how much time is spent and what you can do about it. I strongly encourage you to check it out! You will find it at: https://hbr.org/2019/01/how-to-spend-way-less-time-on-email-every-day
 
Activity
This week spend time applying one or two of these “fast fixes” to your inbox, or to the way you process email. While setting up a quick step or rule may take time in the short-term, it can save time in the long-term.

Connection to the Workbook and Planner
Consider tracking the amount of time you are spending on email over one or two weeks. Notice how you are replying and what changes could be made.
 
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Best wishes, 
Jennifer

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Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Author of PlanDoTrack (2019),  Coaching Business Builder (2018), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013). Pick up a copy of any of her books at Amazon
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This week’s Weekly Planning Hack invites you to think about decluttering your digital landscape (or even starting afresh).
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Recently, decluttering has been a popular topic in everyday lifestyle arenas. From Marie Kondo’s philosophy of “Does it bring you joy?”, to Gretchen Rubin’s focus on “Outer Order, Inner Calm” (the same name as her newest book), we may also want to take a look at our digital landscape, where many of us spend a bulk of our time.
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Take a look at your digital landscape (which may include phones and computers, and tablets, and hard drives). Ask yourself:

• What is working well?
• What aren’t you using?
• What can be removed?
• What needs to be backed up? After that back up – what do you want to keep? Archive? Spotlight?
• What needs to be deleted?
• What do you need to unsubscribe from?
• What is your vision of a truly satisfying digital landscape on the different devices you own?
• What would minimizing look like for you in terms of devices and content?

Earlier this year I spent some time exploring this topic with a group of business owners. The topic of digital clutter was causing significant angst for several group members, impeding their ability to get work done.

On a scale of 1-10, how important is this topic for you right now?
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What is the time window you are going to allocate to focus on it?

When will you get it done?

Best of luck!
​Jennifer