The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ​“Done!” pod­cast:

Easy peasy — sometimes

This is eas­i­ly done if what we receive is eas­i­ly under­stood and processed. Short, clear, con­cise emails are easy to deal with. These make it pos­si­ble to:

• respond quick­ly, or
• write down some­thing we need to do that will not be done imme­di­ate­ly, or
• start some­thing more exten­sive that takes a long time to com­plete, or
• make note that we are wait­ing for some­thing from some­one we want to keep an eye on, or
• save it some­where because it might come in handy lat­er on, or
• throw it away since it will serve no fur­ther purpose.

Get­ting stuck in the tricky

This, how­ev­er, is eas­i­er said than done if part of what we received is com­plex, dif­fi­cult to inter­pret, or needs clar­i­fi­ca­tion. When you read the long, wind­ing, and dif­fi­cult email the first time you find your­self none the wis­er. It is appar­ent­ly very impor­tant, but what does this real­ly mean and what is it ask­ing you to do? It requires quite a bit more atten­tion, focus, and in-depth analy­sis than you are cur­rent­ly able to give it, so you leave it be for now and move on to the next email.

But with­out real­iz­ing it, you now have a loose end you need to return to at some point. The next time you look for new emails you are remind­ed of the tricky email and the fact that you have to ​”deal with it” soon.

It keeps get­ting and feel­ing heav­ier to do so but it doesn’t have to.

Do this

Regard­less of how com­pli­cat­ed or tricky some­thing you have received appears, you can always do at least some­thing about it. There is always a next step. This next step will have a verb of some kind and is there­fore a to-do-task, just as any oth­er, which you either do straight away or add to your to-do-list to do some oth­er time.

When you are about to ​”put down” an already read email (or mes­sage, paper, some­thing a col­league said, or the likes) and there­by cre­ate an irri­tat­ing loose end, stop for a moment and for­mu­late the next step to your­self. It can, for instance, begin with:

• Ana­lyze …
• Care­ful­ly read one more time …
• Inves­ti­gate …
• Ask (some­one else what you are sup­posed to do with it) …
• Acquaint your­self clos­er to get a bet­ter grip on …
• And so on…

Take this next step right away or write it down as a task on your to-do-list. You can now save the mes­sage or mate­r­i­al you got where you keep oth­er ref­er­ence mate­ri­als. There is no need to keep it in sight in order to keep it in mind since the to-do-list will keep an eye on the task for you.

Free to move for­ward with full speed

If you define the next step for every­thing you receive, you make your­self free to remove the email, mes­sage, or what­ev­er it was out of the way for new things that come in. Even if you are not fin­ished with the thing you received, you have at least tak­en the first step — if only just defin­ing that first step. You are more ahead than you oth­er­wise would have even been and it makes it pos­si­ble to — even if just for a moment or so — com­plete­ly emp­ty the inbox of unat­tend­ed emails or messages.

What’s your way?

What is your way of sift­ing and sort­ing your way through the har­vest of incom­ing emails and mes­sages quick­ly and with­out get­ting stuck? Do you have a trick for keep­ing your pace up and still not for­get­ting or los­ing any­thing? If so I would be delight­ed if you would email me and share your thoughts with me.

(By the way, do you know these nine ways to reduce the inflow of e‑mails?)