Serve your congregation, not Outlook
I don’t give hat tips regularly enough because I figure that my readers are already reading what I read, and that’s an assumption that I just can’t make. This edition of techlesia is inspired by ripped off from Cynthia Ware’s post at the Digital Sanctuary.
I’ve already had conversations with four or five colleagues this week that had me quoting Cynthia’s post, so I wanted you to benefit from the wealth of ideas that Cynthia provides. Below are some of the most important pieces from Cynthia. You can read the whole article here.
Since Christian leaders, especially pastors, are often “wired” for serving others, it’s not really a surprise that online communication technologies can sometimes trick us, tempting us to serve them rather than serving us.
Mastering your email is absolutely essential for freeing your time for other things. Furthermore, several fundamental principles provide a simple way to get ahead of your inbox and stay “in control” of your email.
She then points us to Michael Hyatt, Thomas Nelson Publishers’ President & CEO. Hyatt has some simple tips to stay on top of your e-mail. (Again, I’m quoting Cynthia, quoting Michael, who works for Thomas)
- Empty your inbox everyday.
- Don’t get bogged down, keep moving.
- Do—take action on the task now. I follow David Allen’s two-minute rule. If I can do what is being requested in less than two minutes, I do it immediately. This gets stuff off your to-do list before it ever gets on it. This has the added advantage of making you look responsive.
- Delegate—pass the task along to someone else. I’m not talking about “passing the buck.” But oftentimes someone else is better equipped to fulfill the sender’s request. Dawson Trotman once said, “I purposed never to do anything others could or would do when there was so much of importance to be done that others could or would not do.” In other words, try to focus on where you add value and offload everything else.
- Defer—consciously decide you will do the task later. This only applies to asks you cannot complete in two minutes or less or can’t delegate to someone else. You can either add the task to your to-do list or schedule an appointment with yourself to complete it. Fortunately, in Entourage, I convert an email message to a task or an event (i.e., appointment) with a single keystroke. [Two keys in Outlook, by the way]
- Delete—determine if you might need the information later. If not, delete it. My own assumption is that if it’s really important, someone, somewhere else in the world, has a copy of it.
- File—if you think you might need the information, file it. But do not create an elaborate set of file folders. This is the single most important piece of advice I can give you. Just file everything in one folder called “Processed Mail.” If it is more complicated than this, it will lead to procrastination. Trust me on this. You will have to decide, Should I file this under Tami because it is from her or under Max because it is about him? And then what happens if the email covers more than one subject? Do you make copies of the email and put one copy under each folder? Things can get complicated fast.Forget all of that. File your email in one folder and let your email or system software (e.g., “Spotlight”) find it when you need it. The search capabilities of almost every modern email program will enable you to put your hands on any message whenever it is necessary. It may take you a few minutes longer to find the message using this method, but this is offset by the hours you waste trying to figure out how to file your messages.
- Use keyboard shortcuts and avoid the mouse.
- Let email rules filter the low-priority stuff.
I’ve been keeping pretty well on top of my inbox lately. I’m down to 18 messages waiting for action today, compared to the thousands that used to hang around in my inbox. Life is much better this way – much better.
Great post ! I just feel that clearing the inbox WITHOUT spam is really easy .. but with the amount of spam nowadays it simply took me centuries. Just to share a little , I gave up on my Outlook junk filters after a few months , I spent an hour at least going through my Junk/spam to weed out wanted emails. Afterwhich I just paid 90 bucks to http://www.antispam.com.sg and I must say , clearing emails got so much more efficient without losing those wanted mails .. extremely cost effective solution as compared to the big “anti-spam” boys out there , best of all they are a human assisted spam filter … Nothing beats the human brain i guess .. haha
that’s funny. I saw this post in the reader and did not realize it was you writing it. when i read it I thought to myself that you should read it, because i never liked all the emails in your box. haha