Managing Email

Advice from email experts and addicts

Since your colleagues, clients, customers, kids and kin all know you have cell phones, pagers, palm pilots and hotel Internet access, it takes sheer guts to lose contact on purpose.

Equally daunting is email management once you return to the office.

Below are tips to taming the Techno Beast, supplied to HealthLeader by the UT Office of Institutional Advancement, a floor full of communications specialists and confessed email junkies.

But, as with the first rule of Alcoholics Anonymous, “First, you have to want to change...”

Email/Voicemail on vacation:

 

• “I set up my out-of-office assistant [available on Outlook and most other email servers] to tell people that I am out. I do not check email until I return to the office. I have come to realize that the world will continue to turn without me, hard as that is for me to believe.” — Development writer
• I generally check office email at least a couple of times over the weekend. If I’m on a longer trip, I don’t usually connect through a hotel because the dial-up or per-minute charge can be exorbitant. So I do take advantage of the out-of-office and forwarding features so that I don’t have to worry that something urgent will sit there unattended. — Editor, writer
• I check voice mail about every other day, but I don’t take my pager to the beach.— Editor, writer
• “My main work-related addiction is my email. My pager gets left at home and my cell phone generally stays turned off. And this summer, for the first time, I just didn’t go online at all [during vacation]. Email went unchecked and everyone survived. There were [only] about 140 emails waiting upon my return and they were easily sorted the first day and all dealt with by the second day.” — Senior media specialist
• “You can go cold-turkey. Really. Just activate the vacation message and go!” — Media Specialist
• “I cannot disengage. Anyone who knows me, knows that I carry a pager, cell and that I work through email. So when I DO ‘unplug’ people simply get angry and want to know why I didn’t answer their call, message, page, no matter how many ‘Gone Fishin’ messages I hang, post or record.” — Editor, writer

Back in the saddle...or cubicle

 

• “Organize. Create folders within your inbox so that you can dump those ‘read later’ emails and then be able to find them to actually read later. As for mass emails: put the personal/funny ones in a separate folder and enjoy them at the end of the day, when you typically need a laugh.” — Web developer
• I am Pavlovian—I hear the ‘trrrrrillll’ of incoming email and I stop what I’m doing to check it. I know this is highly inefficient. So now, I log off after the first-morning read, and don’t log on again for a few hours. All told, I check email about five times a day. Then, once at home.” — Communications specialist
• “I assume post-vacation that my day will be ‘open the mail’ day. I take my time and look at this day as catch-up time. It is also when I clean out email folders and do the serious discard.” — Marketing Specialist
• In general, I answer each email as it comes in. For me, it shortens the ‘to-do’ list. But, then again, most of what I have to do IS email-related. — Web specialist
• “I am project-minded. I forward calls to voice-mail until I’m through with a project and answer email three times a day, only. Otherwise, I would never finish a story or reach a deadline.” — Editor, writer
• Less time can be spent on email by limiting the number of times you open it each day, rather than responding to the ‘new mail’ cue; eliminating one-word replies to co-workers; subscribing only to essential web services; limiting email conversations by conversing in person; using the auto-discard lists offered by Outlook [and other email servers].
• If you have Outlook, get to know Rules Wizard [a tool for managing email]. You can create folders, flag important messages and even flag them to be answered by a certain day. You can single out people, mail, topics—and turn your email into a useable tool, instead of a nuisance. A true timesaver. — Webmaster
• “I am an email junkie. I can’t help myself. I check it religiously at work, on vacation, at home. Then I check it again. I have convinced myself that I’m actually doing myself a favor by deleting junk mail and answering mail that I’m sure warrants my immediate attention. The cell phone is another matter. I have no problem turning that off.” — Media specialist

UPDATED: 08-04-2003

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