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Showing items tagged with "holiday email overload" - 7 found.

Email Free Vacation – will you have one?

It’s that time of year, many of us are either on or planning a vacation. The perpetual question is whether or not to have an email free vacation.

We found that 80% said that dealing with the holiday email overload is one of the most stressful aspects of having a vacation. More stressful even than loosing your passport. Hence why they did not dare have an email detox. As stress and mental health rises up the corporate agenda, the reasons for disconnecting are ever more pressing to preserve our well-being.

Organisations have adopted many ways to lessen the holiday email overload effect from an ‘Out of Office’ messages asking you to re-send the email when the other person is back to adopting an email free vacation charter. But what if your company has no such policy? Here are the top ten actions you can take by yourself to have an email free vacation and reduce the holiday email overload mountain.

Pack the inbox properly

1. De-clutter your inbox before going on leave. Clear out all the old emails and flag those needing your attention on return. Be ruthless, delete the low priority ones.
2. Use rules to divert all new low priority emails eg newsletters and in reverse highlight potentially important ones.
3. Set a safe and simple Out of Office message. Run it for a day before and after your vacation to allow time to chill out and then gear up smoothly.
4. Switch off work email feed on your mobile device if you use only one mobile device. Otherwise leave the work one at home.

The email free vacation

5. Establish a disaster recovery plan. In case of a real emergency leave a contact point.
6. If you feel you must check your emails, allocate specific times eg end/beginning of the day.

Unpack the inbox on your return

7. Spend the first half hour talking to colleagues to see what has been happened and hence which emails need you immediate attention.
8. Attack the inbox. Block out one/two hours for the first few days to clear the important emails. Use time management techniques like Pomodoro or apps like Saent to stay focused.
9. Utilise the email software functions to help save time, for instance creating templates of text for responding (Quick Parts in Outlook) and Quick Steps to move and flag emails for action later (remembering managing the sender’s expectation).
10. Stop after three/four days. Move the rest out to a folder and leave them.   By then if you still have not cleared all the really important emails it’s time to reflect on what are your real priorities.  This is akin to declaring email bankruptcy which is used very successfully by many (to defuse the holiday email backlog) on the basis that if it is that important someone will soon re-email you.

Do you have any tips to share about dealing with the email free vacation challenge? There is a free copy of either Brilliant Email or Taking Control of Your Inbox for the best response. Email us your suggestions by 10 August.

Tags: Email Bankruptcy, email free vacation, email overload, holiday email overload, Mental Health and Email, Pomodoro, Saent, well being

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Articles and Blogs of Note – September 2016

Digital detoxing dominated the summer headlines as not just the Millennial generation tried it to recover from lack of sex and poor personal relations.  Meanwhile, Hilary Clinton’s public profile continued to suffer from the fall-out from using her personal email account for State business. Not quite email, but take a look at the self-assessment on how robust are your social media posts.

Last but not least there is still time to listen to Monica’s email best practice Q&A session on the Sasha Twining show on BBC Radio Solent.  It’s about 2hrs 09 minutes into the whole programme. 

1. Digital detox the business imperative.   Despite it being related to summer vacations, there are some very important messages around taking a digital detox even if only for a few hours.  We still spend far too much time with our heads in our mobile devices and not enough seeing and listening properly to the here and now. This is a summary of some of the key articles.

2. How to avoid email overload and enjoy a digital detox. If you have not yet had a break, here are top tips on how to reduce the holiday email overload and enjoy a digital detox.

3. Should I hit Reply All – No.  The New York Times devoted nearly half a page to the one word response to a reader’s question about hitting Reply All. That sums up how important the word ‘No’ can be.

4. Cash for favours, emails turn heat up on Clinton. Clinton’s use of a private email server for US Government business continues to dog her Presidential campaign. We’ve think before hitting send. What does this email say about me. What if it fell into the wrong hands. Few of us will make it to such a position of high office but even so emails we wish we had never sent have a habit of coming back to haunt us just as Hilary Clinton is finding out.

5. How safe are your social media posts? A very useful self-assessment exercise to help protect your your professional reputation.

Tags: BBC Radio Solent, Digital detox, Hilary Clinton and Email, holiday email overload, Millenials, Reply All, Sasha Twining

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Overcome the Post Holiday Email Overload

How did your inbox cope with your absence? Unless you packed it up properly, it might be suffering with acute email overload. Take heart. The key is to prioritise your time and decide what is really worthy of your attention. Which emails must you answer? What is no longer an issue and therefore to reply is wasting both your time and the recipients. What really does not deserve your attention and can be deleted?

Here is a seven point fail-safe plan to help you cool it down and maybe even reach inbox zero.

1. Before you even open it, talk to your colleagues to find out what has been happening and what really needs your attention.
2. Open the box and sort and group by person/project. In Outlook use the ‘Show As Conversation’ view. See screen shoot below.
3. Pick off the emails which either must be answered or will earn you brownie points.
4. Pursue this path for an hour or two or at least until either you have identified all the critical emails or you have a meeting looming.
5. Flag all the high priority email (or move them to a folder). Deal with them as quickly as possible.
6. Move all the non-essential emails out of your inbox.
7. Make sure that by the end of the week you have dealt with all the important emails. If you have spare time you might want to peruse the non-essential ones. If not forget them and move on. They are past their sell by date.

If all else fails, delete the lot and declare ‘Email Bankruptcy’ safe in the knowledge that if anything was that important the sender will soon follow-up! When they do, bluff and say their email must have got lost.

Game, set and match. Holiday email backlog cleared. And for you ‘inbox zero’ and a clean inbox.

Need more help keeping on top of your email? Call us now and let us run a ‘Brilliant Email Management’ workshop for your and your colleagues.

Tags: Email Bankruptcy, email overload, holiday email overload

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You’ve got mail (all the bloody time)

Top tips on dealing with a backlog of emails (731 almost equivalent to War and Peace).  Stylist Magazine July 2015

Tags: holiday email overload

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Improving personal productivity – September articles & blogs of note

An eclectic bunch this month.  Here are our top seven (from August) to help you improve personal and business productivity and manage the risk of cyber crime.  Some of which we email you about in August.

1.  Ten pieces of IT jargon we love to hate.  

Our favorite of the batch.  It comes with a video and will make you laugh. Next time either an email is ignored or proposal rejected, check how many of these phrases it contains. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Email bankruptcy to stop wasting time

2.  Understand your body clock to time your workouts.

Recent research suggest late afternoon optimum.  But what if we cannot take time off then?

3.  Declare email bankruptcy to avoid vacation email overload.

Is this a viable option when you come back to a mountain of email after being out of the office whether on leave or business? Yes for many time poor business people.

4.  Six ways to beat the email holiday blues.

A guest post by Dr Seeley for Zoe Amear.

5.  Here’s a radical way to end vacation email overload. 

Daimler have developed an application to stop sending emails to people on leave.  It automatically pings back a response to the sender asking them to re-send the email after the recipient returns. Novel and perhaps all part of the EU’s plans to reduce the working day to 48 hours.

6.  Are universities failing computer science graduates?

Fifteen percent of computer science graduates are still out of work six months after graduating yet industry is crying out for skilled computer staff. What is causing the gap?

7.  (Spanish )Holiday booking scam

Looks like using even the most trusty hotel booking sites you still need to be extra vigilant.

Tags: cyber crime, Daimler, Email Bankruptcy, holiday email overload, improve personal productivity, IT Jargon, Zoe Amear

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