Project Managers - Manage Your Emails

Managing your email can be an extremely stressful activity, project manager or not. Not only does it take a lot of time, but it can be extremely unproductive and divert a large amount of focus away from the work you actually need to be doing.

Project management courses can teach you how to be organised as a project manager, but the approach you personally take to your organisation is down to you, and you alone. In this article we’ll be looking at how to reduce the amount of time you spend in your inbox and how to make sure that you can focus on what needs to get done whilst still be able to use email effectively when absolutely necessary.

1. Allocate time specifically for email.

The best way to manage your email is to allocate time specifically to checking your inbox and replying to any important emails. It’s best to do this maybe once or twice a day at most. Email typically tends to require less focus than some more intensive tasks and it’s usually best to schedule email time for the times in the day when your focus starts to wander.

If you want you can also craft an automatic response to any incoming emails informing the sender of when you check emails and when they can expect a response. Make sure anyproject management training you provide for your team includes your approach to email organisation, and allows team members to communicate with you directly if they need to.

2. Act fast - don’t put things off until later.

We all know the feeling, an email comes in that absolutely requires our attention or the heavens will come raining down. Firstly, there are few occasions when an immediate response is absolutely necessary. That said, it can be helpful to get into the habit of acting quickly on emails where possible so that they don’t mount up into a terrifying prospect.

Respond to important emails within 48 hours when possible, otherwise they’ll be looming over your head like a bad hangover. You could ask team members to rate the importance of their enquiry from 1-5 with 1 being an email you can respond to over a few days, and 5 being one that needs an immediate response. For example; if they want to schedule project management training that would be a 1, but if they need to speak to you about an issue preventing them from reaching a milestone, that would be a 5.

3. Organisation is key.

Making sure that your inbox is organised can be a massive help when wading through your email. Being able to filter through the emails that are potentially more important than others is key to being able to work efficiently.

Messages from clients? If they’re important you can handle them as soon as possible, which could make the difference between getting paid and not getting paid. However, messages from someone who you spoke to on Twitter? Probably not as important and can be dealt with another time if necessary.

4. Clear the clutter!

The absolute worst thing you can do to a productive inbox is subscribe to lots of different newsletters. Whether they’re Monthly, weekly, daily or even hourly. If you don’t need them for the productivity of your daily work schedule, then kill them off - unsubscribe for christ’s sake! This one is simple, if you don’t read it then kill it. If you do read it and you don’t need it, move it to another account, or at least filter it into another folder and don’t check it until other, more important tasks are out of the way.

So, there you go. It’s not hard really, you just have to train yourself, change your email habits and allow yourself to become more productive. You’ll thank me for it, honest.

The author has written and published articles on a wide range of topics including Small Business Advice, Tax and Accounting, Interior Design, House Renovation and Project Management.