Ursula Hoult - How to keep a clean inbox

HBR management tip of the day for the 18^th of May was focused on stopping email overload. Given the impact of email on our lives, this story seems one that likely caught the attention of most of their readers. Looking at their 3 tips, to me the one that seemed easier to say than do was “keep a clean inbox”.

"It’s easier to handle incoming messages without clutter staring back at you. Create a new folder called "Old Inbox" and put all your messages in there. Then when new email comes in, sort it right away."

Having implemented their tip on occasion – ie create a folder called old inbox and move everything there - it always seemed to me the hard part was then keeping it clean and I thought I might take a moment to share my methods for mostly doing this.

1. I set aside a time to process my inbox. My choice is first thing in the day. Some experts consider it shouldn't be the driving factor in the day but in the work I do, I'm often responding to other people, so my work is my inbox!

2. With all my accounts coming into one inbox*, it can seem overwhelming, so I filter by the different types of messages I want to process, in my priority order. Then I work through the different filters until my inbox is empty.

3. Many of the messages that arrive in accounts that I am responsible for, need input from my colleagues. These I assign to the right person with questions. The act of assigning, unlike forward, takes the message out of my inbox (nice and clean, you see the appeal now) and puts it into their inbox. These messages invariably come back but when they do, the task they refer to is closer to being finished.

4. Where I can reply straight away, I do – general rule, can this be done in under one minute? If yes, then do so. Then I label and file the message, in a unified folder that colleagues can also access.

5. If I can't give the message away (assign) or answer straight away, I place it in the Reminder folder for a time that I set aside for doing these tasks. The message is then removed from my inbox until the time that I have specified, at which point it reappears with the notes I made for what I want myself to do.

I try to keep working through the messages until none remain, then refresh for those that have arrived (or been answered) during my processing session and work through the messages again. At that point – I turn off my email (no matter how much I want to keep hitting refresh to see what new messages have come in) because by this point, I should have figured out what tasks I need to do for the next few hours.

Then I repeat this process a couple of times during the day.

I wonder sometimes that it's taken me over fifteen years to learn this email best practice but for me it's better late than never! So my question goes out to the readers of this blog - where do you feel you're at with your ability to keep your inbox clean?

*Note: that some of the methods I use, are based around use of Unified Inbox. You may have other products you prefer to use, that may or may not have these functionalities.

 

 

 

Christopher Weir - That Monday morning feeling

Today is Monday, the start of mine and most people’s week. Much like most other people I have my morning routine, and if this is disrupted it will spill over into the rest of the day and I will be a pain to be around, it is not a pleasure to start my day with a hot shot of caffeine, but a necessity.  

This routine isn’t filled with excitement but I need this routine to set me up for the rest of the day. It starts with boiling the kettle for my morning wake up coffee and is followed by a bowl of cereal whilst I load up my laptop to check my emails before moving on to work on my tasks for the day. Recently however, I have found that this routine is taking up more and more of my day. Previously I would work my way through my emails whilst eating my breakfast and be free to start working properly half an hour after waking up (the joys of working from home) however, more and more these days my emails are taking up a disproportionate amount of my time.

This morning I went through my usual routine up until the point where I took that first joyous sip my wake up juice to find that I had 166 new emails that had collected over the weekend. I somehow doubt that my laptop appreciated its nice warm coffee scented shower this morning but that is what it had. This was not just Information Overload, this was more a case of Information Overwhelmed! On top of this I have Twitter accounts, Facebook accounts and LinkedIn to monitor and it was at this point I began to realise what people are referring to when they mention Information Overload.

It is far too easy to send communication through the digital medium, with companies utilising (and sometimes abusing this) to reach as many people as possible. Email and social media are here to stay so what we need to do is better manage our communication, instead of fighting against this tide of information we must all learn to manage it better so as to not become overwhelmed. Thankfully, this is an area which developments are occurring and hopefully information overload will instead become a thing of the past. 

You can help make this happen by giving our  product a trial - Unified Inbox 

To help make this dream a reality then please support us on AngelList

chris@unifiedinbox.com

PRESS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

 

Contact Person: Toby Ruckert (@tobyruckert) or Ursula Hoult (@ursulahoult)
Company Name: Unified Inbox
Telephone Number: +1 408 490 3430 ext. 700
Email Address: ceo@unifiedinbox.com
Web site address: http://unifiedinbox.com
Twitter: @unifiedinbox
Press information: http://unifiedinbox.com/press.html

______________________________

 

Email is not broken. But better clients are needed. Is this a dream combination?

18 April 2012 — With today's launch of the PowerInbox integration, users of Unified Inbox now have the ability to get new levels of interactivity in their emails.

With the PowerInbox integration, if a Unified Inbox user gets an update about a new Twitter follower, they don't just get the bare bones information and a link that leads them on the Twitter homepage, now they get a much richer set of information right there in the email and the ability to tweet or message that user - all without leaving their email in Unified Inbox. 

A driving force behind the development of Unified Inbox was the desire to help users collaboratively manage and integrate social media with email in their companies. The collaboration that users are looking for means that if someone tweets about their company, the tweet can be easily handled (within Unified Inbox) by the people most qualified to do so. This use case often applies in the e-commerce sector, especially where internal and external communication meet.

"We're a company dedicated to making communication simpler and more meaningful. So when PowerInbox approached us about empowering our users emails with an in-message app, we asked only one question - when can we start?“ says Toby Ruckert, Founder and CEO of Unified Inbox.

The integration offers added functionality that makes Unified Inbox users even more effective at handling their social media reaching them via their email inbox. The initial PowerInbox functionality covers Facebook, Twitter, Groupon, Flickr and other services to be announced shortly.

"Getting the most out of your email is a huge problem we all face and Unified Inbox has a really novel approach to solving this by bringing all your inboxes together. This was in complete alignment with our vision at PowerInbox and it was great to be involved with the launch of this exciting product. Unified Inbox users are going to get to experience all PowerInbox functionality right in their email without any downloads, and this wouldn't have been possible without the vision of the fantastic team at Unified Inbox - our entire integration took less than an hour to complete, a win for everybody involved." says Matt Thazhmon, Founder & CEO of PowerInbox about the integration experience with Unified Inbox.

Any time one company integrates their product with another there is the possibility for disaster but when the Unified Inbox Chief Technology Officer, Emy Carlan, was asked about this he said "It was by far one of the smoothest integrations we've done to date. This integration has had the biggest immediate impact on our software's value proposition and the volume of positive user feedback associated with it.“

When asked why interactive emails made sense for his users, Toby responded: “Unified Inbox users have made the choice to proactively manage the email overload in their personal and professional lives. One of the biggest causes contributing to overload are email notifications. By allowing greater interaction with key sites from within their emails, the PowerInbox integration within Unified Inbox reduces the time the users spend in different applications and reduces the number of clicks to a minimum and so increases the users productivity to a maximum."

Summary: Unified Inbox and PowerInbox integration brings new levels of interactivity into emails as a standard feature.

About Unified Inbox: Unified Inbox is the creator of the world's first true mobile unified communications app in the form of a unified inbox. With Unified Inbox you can stop overload and start living. Get all your messages in one place: anywhere, anytime. View international funding round on http://angel.co/unified-inbox

About PowerInbox: PowerInbox is a provider of email technology that enables live content to operate directly within the body of your email (for instance, one click shopping within email, viewing Facebook pictures and comments in email and tweeting directly from email),

 

Captions for images:

• UIB Twitter 1: What a non-Unified Inbox customer sees when they open a Twitter notification email.
• UIB Twitter 2: What a Unified Inbox customer sees when they open a Twitter notification email. Note the ability to respond and tweet the other person, from within your email. 

 

Toby Ruckert. The nature of written and spoken words are quite different:

The spoken word carries the most potent power at the given present moment, allowing for prompt reaction, leading to conversation and thus less room for speculation.

The written word instead lives and breathes with interpretation, based on circumstances and different individual perceptions in which there is plenty of room for misunderstandings.

Therefore when working in a global team, possibly with very different cultures involved, it is best to agree on some basic ground rules not just for email but for all your written communication. From own experience I know that the following things definitely helped productivity and team spirit:

• in our teams as a general rule we avoid the use of superlatives, as they often indicate strong emotions which may heighten the existing emotional response of the reader so that they interpret the message content in an overly emotional way.
• we encourage each other to pro-actively start a message with the information that we are having a bad day or similar, so the (emotional) context of the subsequent writing is brought into perspective.
• I think every existing team member now knows that we don’t write in CAPITAL letters unless it’s absolutely necessary to explain a problem, but even then – they would first consider opting for bold, italics or underline font styles instead, as they are normally sufficient to get the message across, right?
• absolutely no swearing: it never does or did anybody or anything any good. Do you really believe that “more better” stuff “got done” because you (as CEO or investor) swore at something or somebody? Chances are that with every time you publicly swear at something or at somebody, you – on a personal level – just lose a little bit of the respect of that team member. This may not impact ones professional standing immediately, but I am sure that it does long term, even though it seems to be a fun hobby for some leaders in the worlds startup community;
• stopping the usage of unnecessary repetitions or irregular use of punctuation marks such as .. or ……. or ???? or ?!??? or !!!!! – what use do they have any way? Everybody interprets them differently! Using exclamation marks, full stops etc. is the historic way to communicate and nothing is wrong with them, but what exactly do overly done repetitions mean? Use a “?” for a question, the question does not become stronger if there are “??????” behind it. Use “…” and not “..” as it conveys a laissez-fair (don’t care) attitude. Using “…….” conveys “this issue is a never never ending story, I could go on and on about it -> ‘you keep failing’”

So as early as possible in the start-ups life make your team aware of these points and discuss it with them. Personal bad habits need not be easily welcomed in professional relations, it’s easy enough to at least once discuss this together → particularly when you’re still a young and dynamic company with few staff. It’s far easier to do at this time than trying to build that into corporate company culture later.

To an extent I can understand that as the CEO of a big corporate you may not want to go into these reviews of communication styles personally. But as the Founder of a company, there is no way around this kind of thing and it is better to be prepared rather than to be taken by surprise.

This simple matter can affect productivity and progress of your company significantly, it can build good team morale, respect for each other, loyalty and can become part of your companies culture early on.

Needless to say that I’m trying hard to live up to my just posted standards!

 

Originally posted: Toby’s Posterous

 

In our original blog on New Year’s Resolutions and how to keep them, we noted that amongst the most popular category of resolution were the “be better somehow” resolutions. 

So in this category we find the “learn new stuff” resolution. It sounds good, most “be better somehow” resolutions do but let’s get specific on why you would want to make this your resolution for 2012.

Living in competitive and constantly changing times most of us are aware that that the skills we learnt yesterday aren’t the ones that are valuable today. We could wait until this is patently obvious (ie redundancy) or make 2012 the year we are proactive in updating our skills.

The other reason to focus on learning new skills, and one that current research is increasingly supporting, is that we have choices about how we age. The good news is that our brains can stay agile and responsive into our later years – the hard-work news is that we have to push our boundaries and continuing forcing our brains to learn new skills in order for this development to take place.

Additional benefits for those who decide to learn new skills in 2012 include:

• Breadth in our learning gives us a range of perspectives to call upon when faced with new problems in our own areas of specialisation.
• The more unfamiliar situations we deal with, the more we practise our innovative and creative thinking. 
• Can we add, that learning deepens our character and makes us more inspiring to those around us?

So is 2012 the year you want to make that positive step? If so, take a moment to think about what skills you could learn. 

Firstly - what do you enjoy – really this is the most important criteria, all the others are secondary because if you decide to take up the most worthwhile new skill in the world but don’t enjoy it, you are highly unlikely ever to complete the learning.

Secondly:

• what learning is available? Your workplace may sponsor learning of new skills they see as valuable.
• what local opportunities are there to learn in the company of others – eg community colleges, night school. Many of us are motivated by our social nature. If you take a class with others and enjoy their company, you’re likely to keep going to class.
• other learning opportunities – the internet can deliver on nearly any learning need you have – a quick search will generally bring up a choice of resources – from free HowTo to Hack a Day to subscription only courses.

Whatever skill you decide to focus on this year, you’re going to have to allocate time.  Think carefully about the commitment you’re prepared to make and is that realistic to the lifestyle you lead. A little bit every day, is more valuable than big blocks of time every now and then.

We’d love to catch up with you this time next year and find out what new skill you took on board and how that made a positive difference to your life!

 

The latest in the Unified Inbox series of updates to make your life easier and less burdensome is the Google Calendar integration.

Adding a Google Calendar connection to your account is as simple as adding any other connection.

Whether you have added a Google Calendar connection or not, you will still be able to schedule reminders for yourself in Unified Inbox. The latest update allows you to drag any message into the Reminder folder and be asked when you would like to be reminded of it. You have here the option to keep the message out of sight until that time.

And then if you have added a connection to your Google calendar you can choose to add it to your calendar with just the click of a button.

Sign up for Unified Inbox today to experience the tools that make life easier and get a one month free trial.

 

Read the story of the Unified Inbox team member who discovered the benefits of location-independant work the hard way.....

"I'm sure it's not just me that has those anxiety dreams about being late for a flight or running all over the airport trying to get to the gate before the plane leaves. But for me at least, until now they have only been dreams.   I had the experience last week of actually missing my flight"....read more

 

We published a blog last year that reported data from a “use of time” study that showed we are increasingly experiencing feelings of hurriedness and time famine.

If it is your resolution this year that you will create a more equitable balance between work and personal life, then we've got ways to go about it.

• Just because you have the technology doesn't mean you have to use. Set aside some time each week (or day) to be technology free - this means phones too! It's amazing the things you can learn about those nearest and dearest to you when you're actually talking to each other. In addition, you can start to think about some physical spaces as technology-free - the bedroom and bathroom are good places to start. You may choose ultimately to return to a “work only in an office” mode, as a way of ensuring that your work/life balance is good.

• Bring all your incoming messages into one inbox and keep all your appointments in one calendar. That need to check all those different places in order to keep on top of your life will go away. Then set aside times to work through your inbox, rather than reacting the minute a new message arrives. Given the time taken to process a message and then get back to what you were originally doing, means that doing this will add significant chunks of time back into your day.

• Be smart in your use of technology – if you really have to send that email out of office hours, how about you take the recipient into consideration and schedule it to arrive during their work day.

• Get a hobby,  or a class or one definite appointment you have to keep each week that is not work-related. Over time you might increase the frequency but let's start out with an achievable goal. It's a great idea if this activity is fun to do with friends or family.

• Take breaks. No-ones productivity improves when they work non-stop. So take a break (leave your desk) and increase your productivity for the rest of the day. If you get more done during your “work-hours” you can in good conscience "not work" for the rest of the day. Sometimes, to work faster, you just gotta work slower.

As with all the resolutions we're considering this week, make sure you start with something that is achievable in bite-sized pieces and then, all going well, increase the frequency or intensity. In this way, you may well get to the end of 2012, with that rare gift of a balanced work/personal life!

The etiquette written about by Miss Manners may be more concerned with the correct knife and fork to use or the suitable time to send a thank-you card but its goal of allowing social interactions to run more smoothly is just as applicable to the electronic workplace.

Email overload is a well-defined problem in workplaces today, with some organisations going so far as to ban the use of email altogether. We however believe that there are better solutions to the problem. One such solution is that each of us can take some responsibility for the burden we place on others with each email we send, and that we take the time to consider our email etiquette.

What then is good email etiquette? Here are our top seven etiquette guidelines to consider:

1. Be concise and to the point – remember that someone else has to take the time to read this email that you have sent in the middle of what is likely to be a busy day for them.

2. Check your spelling and grammar. The reason we have such rules is to ensure that our messages are easily understood. By being correct in your messages you will make your email that little bit easier to read.

3. Don't use capitals. It's the written equivalent of shouting. Mixed case sentences will be easier to read and comprehend.

4. Take the time to read back over your message (in fact, even read it out loud to yourself) and check the tone. An email dashed off in a hurry can come across as brusque or angry and lead to a pointless emotional exchange of messages. Even making sure you add a hello and goodbye will make a difference here, as well, of course, as “please” and “thank-you”.

5. A clear subject line. This enables the recipient to start processing the email before they open the message. In fact, for very short messages such as “see you at 5pm” - the text can be entirely in the subject line with “(eom)” at the end signifying “end of message” so your recipient knows they don't need to open the message.

6. If you've got a long email with a lot of action points – consider breaking it into multiple emails that can be acted on separately.

7. Who are you sending this message to? This could well be the guideline that makes the biggest difference to the email burden you give the world. Check that recipient list carefully. Do the people on there really need to receive this message? Every person you send to will have their day interrupted by this message – think again, do they really need to receive it?

Great email etiquette takes time and training. In terms of introducing it into your workday, take the first email you send and check it against all seven etiquette guidelines listed above. Feeling good? - then do it again for the second. That may be enough for the first day. Day 2 – make sure your first two emails out are perfect in terms of your etiquette, then do another two perfectly (just because it feels good). Each day use the list above consciously for a few more messages.

Before you know it you'll be using this list without conscious thought. By doing so, you are taking a little bit of that email burden off others. And who knows, they may start asking you how you do it, so making their outward messages that little less burdensome as well!

 

Over 2011, we wrote several times about the myth of multi-tasking. While it seems that every job description will specify strong multi-tasking amongst the list of essential qualities for that job, research shows that we do not perform at our best while performing multiple tasks.

In fact, experiments on how multi-tasking effects our IQ shows that we drop 10 IQ points when forced to handle multiple tasks at once – which is the same level as if we had missed an entire nights sleep and is higher than the loss associated with smoking marijuana.

So, if you've taken this on board and made the decision that this year you're going to practice focus, we got some advice for how to go about it.

One of the specialist techniques available for free is Pomodoro which states that you choose a task to be accomplished, set your timer for 25 minutes, work on that task until the timer rings and then take a short (5 minute) break. At the end of every four Pomodoro units take a longer break.

Keeping with our earlier article on how to keep New Year's resolutions – there's little point deciding to switch your entire work day over to Pomodoro blocks tomorrow. Instead we recommend starting small and starting to train yourself and those around you (because it can be more difficult to train those around you than it is yourself!) to respect one (or two) focus sessions.

Another important process change that you can implement to improve your focus is the way you handle email. If you are in a job that allows for a hour or so to respond, we recommend turning off your notification sounds (and even your whole mail package) except for the three (say) times per day that you will be processing email. By not having your email on for the main part of the day, you can remove these seemingly small, yet in actuality time-consuming, interruptions and regain focus on the actual task in hand.

The final area you can implement if focus is your thing this year – put your phone down when talking to people or listening to them, and yes, this includes meetings. Make sure you catch the full message of the people you're talking to and, by modelling the behaviour you value, maybe (just maybe) they'll start listening to you without interruption too.

As with all the resolutions you plan to work on this year, it's best to have a goal in mind. A general - “I'm going to focus more” is unlikely to get a result, whereas “I'm going to practise one Pomodoro session per day and check my email no more than five times per day” may.