In order to cut down on the NOISE of so many messages in your InBox
Use The 4 D's To Manage It
Decide what to do with each and every message. Know your company policy (4 years?) of how long to store messages for legal reasons. The technique:
- Delete it - Generally you can delete half the email you get as not important at all after you read it. Will you need it for a project or in the next 6 months? Can you find the information elsewhere? Is it required to keep?
- Do It (in less than two minutes) - Complete the task, respond to it, take an action, just do it
- Delegate It - Forward it to the appropriate team member to complete the task, forward it then delete it or move it to a folder
- Defer It - If more than two minutes is required, flag it, set up an appointment with it, set up a reminder to do it another time, put it in a Task Folder
Use the 4 D's technique every day to be very proactive and clean of clutter with your Email. If you are a pack rat like me take chunks of your email if you are fearful of deleting ANYTHING and offload to an external drive or upload to a cloud. But remember to delete periodically (4 years?? or whatever) to not save something outside your company retention period range.
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