Hey, I love mini-rants as much as the next woman, but I thought I would give us a place to share those little moments of joy.
Here’s mine:
I recently found a new e-mail processing technique, it’s great. It requires using a text-file. I opened up the text-file program on my PC and whoa! It’s so different than that single boring box I remember. You can make notes in different tabs and even format a little. The practical applications for this seem endless. No more sorting through various Word documents when I’m taking notes.
The technique, if you’re curious, is this: Review each email quickly, write down to-dos in a text file, archive emails, sort to-dos by context (phone calls, replies, projects) and put them into whatever system you use for full capture (I use Trello.) The point of this is to reduce mental fatigue caused by constant context-switching.
I just tried this and I got through my email in a fraction of the time.
As a bonus: Our CEO forwards me so much stuff that I already received in my own inbox, and replies to every task that’s completed, and it’s annoying as hell, so I created an inbox just for her emails so I don’t have to sort through her banal replies when I’m trying to get my work done.
Email wins!