Handling Email Effectively: The Key to Time Management

How many times a day would you guess that people ask for your time? If you just consider client and colleague meetings, you are seeing only part of the picture. In reality, your time is drained much more covertly by the constant flow of email. It's time to take charge!

What You Need to Remember - Messages Eat Away Your Time
Regardless of the media involved, messages of all kinds drain your time. Instant Messages (IMs) and Tweets are insidious because they seem to take no time at all, but in reality, each takes a few seconds to read. If you choose to answer an IM, you will use up to another minute, depending on your thumb skills and abbreviation acumen. When you understand how much of your time disappears into these electronic black holes, you will quickly realize that you must take action to reduce unnecessary distractions, except in critical situations.

Take Control of Your Email
Are you one of those individuals who end each day with an empty Inbox? If not, read on.

The "Empty Inbox" strategy is simple. If an email requires action, do one of the following:

• Answer immediately - if it takes less than two minutes
• Pass it on - if someone else can honestly add more value or handle it more efficiently
• Defer - schedule a time to answer or add the reply to your to-do list

If an email does not require action, you have two choices:

• Delete - remember that someone else has a copy, along with your backup system
• File - but be aware of creating a cumbersome set of folders

Advanced "Empty Inbox" enthusiasts keep only one file for processed email. If you need to search for a reply, you just need to know an approximate date. Using anything more complex means guessing the name of the file where it is stored, which steals even more time from your day. And if you want to keep your processed mail folder streamlined, all you have to do is remove the oldest mail once every few months.

Also in This Issue

• Use Blogs to Stay Up-to-Date in Commercial Real Estate
• Five Popular Apps for Commercial Real Estate
• Market Your Office Space to Millions of Professionals Using LinkedIn
• Network, Heal Thyself!