Managing Email 2

Congratulations - you turned off the email alert and scheduled yourself to clear email after 11:00 am - didn't you?

Messages are easily lost in the Inbox. To avoid forgetting about a message, learn to use your flag alerts. If you are visually oriented, chose a different colour for different types of alerts: e.g. follow up from your VP could be blue, follow up for you subordinates could be green. Your computer will keep track of the messages that are flagged.

Meanwhile, try and delete messages as soon as possible and file those messages that you need to keep but don't require any further action. The filing system in your email should mirror that of you paper files. That way, your brain only has to remember one system and is more likely to remember where items are located. Finally, in the worse case scenaria affectionately known as the "beer truck phenomena" (what happens if you don't show up tomorrow because you have been hit by a beer truck?) the risk to your company that something important is lost, is reduced, as the likelihood of finding material in your computer is increased.