Top 6 Tips to Improve Your Email Productivity

A lot of professionals use emails to communicate within their own and with other organizations. While convenient, emails can still take a chunk of an individual’s daily schedule. On average, professionals spend 3.1 hours a day reading, examining, composing, and sending emails. All in all, that’s about two working days in a week—which is plenty of valuable time away from performing other important tasks.

Although emails are important, they can make you unproductive if not managed properly. Fortunately, there are ways to handle your emails and still have ample time to do your other tasks. The key lies in improving your email productivity. To learn more about how to do this, read on.

A) Use Email Templates

Composing an email can be time-consuming because each message needs careful thought to ensure that it’s efficient and sounds professional. If you tend to spend a lot of time composing your emails, it’s a good idea to use email templates. These are pre-defined messages used as a base instead of creating new ones from scratch each time

Depending on your industry and the purpose of the email, the template can vary. For instance, brokerage companies utilize recruiting real estate agents scripts to find and hire talented real estate professionals. If you want to lighten your daily email tasks, compose email templates according to the different types of emails you typically write. Then, create an outline with the usual information you include and leave spaces for variables. Aside from saving you time, using email templates ensure you don’t forget important pieces of information. You can also use one of the email deliverability tools to make sure your email will reach its receiver.

B) Organize Your Inbox

Another reason you may be spending too much time with your email is that you’re having trouble finding certain messages in your inbox. The best way to fix this issue is by organizing and minimizing the clutter in your inbox. Begin by deleting any emails you don’t need. The next step is to unsubscribe from newsletters you no longer read or need, which is a more permanent approach rather than just simply deleting them.

Then, categorize emails and organize them into categories. Identify the types of emails you commonly receive and assign them in folders based on the content of the message. Do the same thing for all incoming emails so you can maintain a clutter-free inbox moving forward.

C) Create an Email Routine

If you want to improve your email productivity, establish an email routine. Responding to emails as they come can interrupt your current tasks; even if you’ll just scan an email, it will take you more than a few minutes to refocus your attention on what you’ve been previously working on. Having an email routine can minimize interruptions so you get more things done.

To do this, you can set a schedule for when to check your emails. Depending on how many messages you need to go through daily, you can check your inbox two or three times a day. Set a specific time of the day when you will check your email so you can focus on your other tasks. For example, you can manage your emails once in the morning before starting any tasks that require your full attention. Then, the next time can be in the afternoon as a break from your other tasks. Additionally, you can automate this process by using online tools or RescueTime alternatives, this helps you track your work, improve your email management and run your tasks efficiently.

D) Consider Disabling Email Notifications

If you want to ensure you stick to your daily email routine, it may mean turning off email notifications. This way you won’t feel the urge to check incoming emails. However, turning off your email notifications may not be ideal if you’re expecting an important email. Sometimes, responding late might affect other aspects of your work so it’s best to make exceptions for such situations. Fortunately, they rarely happen and you can quickly enable email notifications should you need to.

E) Apply the Two-Minute Rule

It’s also a good idea to limit the time you spend on a single message so you can improve your work productivity. When reading an email, asses how long it takes to deal with it. If you can handle the task related to the email in less than 2 minutes, then do it immediately. It will help reduce the small tasks you need to do and allow you to have more time for more demanding ones.

F) Minimize Sending Unnecessary Emails

Sometimes, it’s unnecessary to respond to some emails such as those that you send to colleagues informing them you’ve received their emails. By simply not replying to emails that can be answered with one to five words like “Thanks for the information”, “Got it”, or “Ok”, you can drastically improve your email productivity.

If responding to every email is a common practice in your organization, you can communicate to your colleagues you will no longer send confirmation emails. It won’t just save you time, but your colleagues will also have fewer unnecessary emails to read. 

If you don’t manage them well, reading and sending emails can be time-consuming and affect your work daily performance. To use emails to your advantage, consider these tips to improve your email productivity. They will help you stay on top of all your emails and still create excellent results at work.