Get Out of Email Hell: 4 Week Challenge

What is email hell?

• It is when you spend a lot of your time writing emails.
• It is when you can't find an attachment that someone sent.
• It is missing important information or forgetting to respond to emails.
• It is opening your email and being overwhelmed by how many are sitting in your inbox.

But it doesn't have to be this way.

If you want to make changes and start reclaiming your inbox, join us in the 5minlib Get Out of Email Hell: 4 Week Challenge. It officially starts on Monday, October 17th. We break out the latest techniques for you to easily manage it all.

Because let's be honest. Our digital space is just as important as our physical space. Being organized and having a solid process can only increase your productivity and decrease your stress. Who doesn't want that? Join us on the 17th!

4 Week Challenge: Get Out of Email Hell

Day 1: Monday (Archive Folder)

Create a folder called "Archives" and move everything from your inbox to it. EVERYTHING. Congratulations, you're now at Inbox Zero! Have no worries, we will help you clear our your Archives folder, but it is much easier integrating your new process (which you'll learn over these 4 weeks) with an empty inbox.

Day 2: Tuesday (Follow-Up Folder)

Create a folder called "Follow-Up". This is the place your emails will go that you cannot quickly respond to, but eventually need to. Comb through your "Archives" folder and your current inbox, and move all appropriate emails over. Schedule on your calendar a day and time you'll carve out to respond to these emails.

Day 3: Wednesday (Block Time for Email)

Turn off email notifications. You don't need to know the instant an email appears in your inbox. Decide on when you will check your email during the day (right when you come in? Lunch? Thirty minutes before you leave for the day?) and plan at least 30 minutes to go through it. (Plan to check it twice a day if once is too little.) Tell your staff to call or visit you if they need a quick response. Too many emails unintentionally left unanswered because we open them when we don't have the time to answer, then we forget to respond. Be conscious of your time and do email on your own terms. Minimize those distractions for greater productivity in general!

Day 4: Thursday (Unsubscribe)

Search your email for the word "unsubscribe". All newsletters and email lists will appear. Unsubscribe from any newsletter that you never make time to read (or perhaps never even intended to sign-up for in the first place). From this point forward, if you get junk email that you do not care for in your inbox, immediately unsubscribe from it.

Day 5: Friday (Clean-Up Inbox)

Apply the above rules to your current inbox. Make sure when you leave today, your inbox is close to zero. Remember:

• Don't keep an email in your inbox if it requires a task -- move it to the correct folder, and add the task to your To Do List.
• If you need more time to respond, move it to the "Follow-Up" folder and make sure you schedule in your calendar a reminder to respond.
• Unsubscribe from newsletters you don't want.

Day 6: Monday (Create Important Folders)

Go to your "Follow-Up" folder and carve out some time to clear it out. If conversations are completed, delete or move them to a special folder, any folder that makes sense to you (like "Director", "One Book, One Community" or "School Collaborations", etc.). Try to go generic first and then break it down to smaller folders if you find it is getting too big. Having too many folders can make things get complicated. For example, you don't need a folder for every staff member you work with -- you can have a generic "Staff" folder and then separate folders for those you email often ("Director", "Website Team", etc.).

Day 7: Tuesday (To-Do List Tool)

Decide on a To-Do List tool. I use Trello, but there are many apps you can use (Here's a great list) or even a paper calendar. From now on, when an email comes in that you need to do something for, move it out of inbox (delete or archive it into the appropriate folder) and mark it on your To-Do List. Make a note in your list where you saved the email for future reference.

Day 8: Thursday (Read Later Folder/Folders)

Go to your Archives folder and sort it by sender. Pay attention to the emails from organizations. After Day 4's purge, all that should be left are your favorite organizations (Maybe new book news, or Goodreads updates, or publisher emails). Make a filter/rule for them and have them skip the inbox, going directly into a "Read Later" folder. Then schedule in your calendar a weekly day/time when you will read that folder, especially if it is for professional development. (Alternately, you could roll all of these newsletters into one email using the program Unroll.Me if you use something like Gmail. It doesn't work for every email, though, like Outlook.)

Day 9: Thursday (Schedule Follow-Ups)

Are you keeping emails in your inbox because you are waiting for a response? Move them to the right folder and then set a day/time in your calendar to follow up. (Or, if you are using Gmail, you can download Boomerang, which will email you a reminder if no one responds within a set amount of time. You can also schedule emails to go out at a later date/time, which could come in handy.)

Day 10: Friday (Clean-Up Inbox)

Apply the above rules to your current inbox. Make sure when you leave today, your inbox is close to zero. Remember:

• Don't keep an email in your inbox if it requires a task -- move it to the correct folder, and add the task to your calendar/To Do List.
• If you need more time to respond, move it to the "Follow-Up" folder and make sure you schedule in your calendar a reminder to respond.
• Unsubscribe from newsletters you don't want.
• Create filters/rules to move unessential email to a "Read Later" folder.

Day 11: Monday (Digest Mode)

Make sure all of your Electronic Discussion Lists are set to digest mode, not individual emails. You'll get one email at the end of the day that groups together all correspondence. (If you are not on any electronic discussion lists, definitely check out ALA's Lists to get started!) Note: I used to have these redirected to a folder, but ended up never checking it. Now, I leave them in my inbox with a mental deadline -- they are deleted/archived by Friday, whether I read them or not.

Day 12: Tuesday (Create Rules to Immediately Filter the Unimportant)

Create a filter/rule to direct unimportant email (like order confirmations and deliveries from places like Amazon) directly into folders, skipping your inbox all together. You don't need to divert brainpower to those emails and you can easily access those folders on the rare occasion that there is a problem (i.e., can't find something that should have shipped). TIP: If you have to forward these emails to your administrative person, see if they can be added to the account directly, so they can get the email notification when you do.

Day 13: Wednesday (Make Templates)

Look through your sent email to see if there are any questions that you receive frequently. Select one of them and write a generic response template. (Perhaps you get a lot of questions about volunteering at the library or someone is interested in learning more about one of your monthly programs, etc.) Save this response so the next time you receive an email, you can quickly pop this in and hit send. (I actually save this in my drafts but you don't have to.) From this point forward, whenever you get a common question, make sure you save your response.

Day 14: Thursday (Touch It Once Principle)

Adopt the "Touch It Once" Principle. Since you have now scheduled when you will focus on email, you can focus on using your time efficiently when you're in your email. This philosophy means that when you open an email, you finish all tasks needed to then file/delete that email. No emails hanging overhead, no forgotten responses. And, best of all, you'll be saving all of that time you would have used rereading or avoiding the email.

Day 15: Friday (Clean-Up Inbox)

Apply the above rules to your current inbox. Make sure when you leave today, your inbox is close to zero. Remember:

• Don't keep an email in your inbox if it requires a task -- move it to the correct folder, and add the task to your calendar/To Do List.
• If you need more time to respond, move it to the "Follow-Up" folder and make sure you schedule in your calendar a reminder to respond.
• Unsubscribe from newsletters you don't want.
• Create filters/rules to move unessential email to a "Read Later" folder.

Day 16: Monday (Invoices and Bills)

Make a plan for dealing with invoices and bills. Email may not be the best place to store them, especially if you have to process them later. You can use IFTTT to automatically send them to Dropbox or Evernote, which is much easier to find documents than email. If you need to follow-up, move them into your follow-up folder or To Do List.

Day 17: Tuesday (Email has Limitations)

Understand email's limitations. It isn't great for sensitive subjects, conflict resolution, or any topic that requires a lot of back and forth. Use email instead to plan a meeting (face to face if possible, or just over the phone). No matter how nicely worded an email is, miscommunication is bound to happen. You can avoid many problems just by talking it through, watching for verbal, facial, and body cues, and saving yourself many emails in the process.

Day 18: Wednesday (Be Direct)

Make your emails short and to the point. Start off with your main point and then support it afterwards. Try also to think ahead and avoid future emails. If you are looking for a meeting day/time, give your schedule for next week (don't make them play email tag to find the best time). Use bullets to clearly make your points, and follow-up with a phone call if it is important. Most importantly, make sure your signature ALWAYS provides your phone number and address.

Day 19: Thursday (Find More Efficient Tools)

Are there ways you are using email that could be done more efficiently elsewhere? Perhaps it is better to create a Google Form for common questions, so you can get all the information you need without having to email back and forth multiple times. Or perhaps you are trying to setup a meeting with a group of people and can use using something like Doodle to make it easier and involve less emails.

Day 20: Friday (Share Challenge with Someone)

Congratulations!

You have completed our 30 Day Email Challenge. Reflect on the past tasks and see what worked well for you, what didn't. Make changes as you see fit and schedule a time each week or month for you to "clean out" your inbox so that you can remain on top of it!

Today's task is a call to action. If you participated in our email challenge, please let us know in the comments below, or tell us on Facebook/Twitter. If you found it useful, pass this challenge along to someone else and/or tweet about it on Twitter with the hashtag #5minlibEmailChallenge. 

Let's save each other from Email Hell.