How to Be More Efficient and Stop Wasting Time With Your Email

The biggest time-waster, whether at work or home, is constantly checking and dealing with email. If you want to be more efficient and stop wasting time, having a plan with how to deal with your inbox will be the single best way to take control of your life. Believe me, I've been there. I was one of those people who would drop whatever I was doing just to deal with every frivolous email that popped up on my screen. I had a ding whenever I got an email on Outlook, and I kept my Gmail account minimized so I could see when I got a new email. It's not easy to change your habits. I empathize with you, but if you want to be more efficient, a few easy tricks will give you more free time and less stress than you could have ever imagined.

Follow these four tricks and you'll stop wasting time, be more efficient, and start taking control of your inbox.

To be more efficient, check your email on a schedule, not as emails come in
Turn off that little dinger on Outlook. Close down your Gmail browser. In fact, I would go so far to say that you should log off your email accounts so you won't even be tempted to check. I understand you may need to respond to emails at work, and I won't tell you what kind of schedule you should implement, but you do need a schedule. Here's a suggestion for someone who needs to rely on email for work: Check your work email account once an hour, and check your personal email account at lunch and before you leave for the day.

Why is it so important to check your email on a schedule, rather than as an email comes in? You know you're wasting time by reading the email, but have you taken into consideration the hidden costs? If you want to be more efficient you need to focus on the task at hand, complete that task, and then move on. If you're in the middle of writing a letter, then you stop to check your email, consider how you want to respond, and then return to the letter, you've wasted a great deal of time and mental energy by starting and stopping a task. Even a quick break from a task will reduce your efficiency because you'll have to redirect your energy by thinking to yourself, okay, where was I? Take it one step farther and you'll see that this interruption has also caused you undue stress. If the email you got needed a response or required you to do more work, you've now returned to your task of writing a letter with a mind that is no longer clear. The quality and efficiency of the task you were doing will suffer. Email is an interrupter. If you want to be more efficient, you won't let it be.

Stop wasting time: Respond to emails in batches
To be more efficient, respond to email in batches. Let's say you've given yourself a once an hour schedule. You may have fifteen emails that came in during that time. By making checking email your task, you're not interrupting a different task. You can go through your inbox in an orderly fashion, solely focusing on each individual email. You can clearly think about what you're reading and how you want to respond. This focus is what will allow you to be more efficient in your response or decision. By responding in batches, you will be able to more quickly dispense of email tasks. Okay, Bob needs the Acme file. Attach, reply, send. Next. Travelocity has a sale on flights. Delete. Next. Angela needs a meeting tomorrow at 3:00. Reply. Put on calendar. Next.

Delete or file an email after you respond
You need to close the door after every email. There was a task, and now it's complete. You don't have to think about it anymore. You don't have to spend the mental time or energy now that you've finished. Bob had a question about the Acme invoice. You responded and asked him another question. You have nothing more to do after you send the email until you receive a response. Don't leave that email in your inbox. Put in something like an "awaiting response" file. You don't want to look at that email while focusing on other emails. To be more efficient and to reduce stress, you need to close the door. Let's say you are thinking of taking a trip and that Travelocity email doesn't look so bad. Great, put it in a file entitled "Interesting." Now, at 3:30 tomorrow afternoon when you're focusing on thinking about your trip, you can look at that email along with the other trip ideas and Web sites you have. Don't daydream about taking a trip while trying to knock out a letter. Again, your quality and efficiency on that letter will suffer.

Make a decision after reading each email
To stop wasting time you need to be more decisive. When you check your email in batches, you need to completely dispense of one email before you get to the next one. After reading a particular email, decide what you need to do. Don't say you'll get back to it. Don't just skip to the next one. You'll waste time and energy by having to constantly change the direction of your thoughts. If an email needs a response, respond and file it. If it's junk, delete it. Following this practice will help you more quickly dispense of your emails and will help you be more effective in other areas of your work life. You'll learn to not second guess yourself and to more quickly come to a conclusion. If you want to be more efficient, you'll make faster decisions. Since you'll be more focused on the task at hand, you're decisions will also be better.

If you want to be more efficient, stop wasting time, reduce stress, and make faster and better decisions, follow four tricks on how you deal with emails. It's not easy to change your habits, but this advice isn't earth shattering. All it takes is a little commitment. You'll be glad you did it.