Comments on: What do YOU do to return email promptly?

By: jennifer

jennifer — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:22:34 +0000

I love your ideas and observations so far! Thank you!

Along with the strategies, I keep thinking there’s an “inside job” piece to this issue that I keep almost getting, but missing. Something like, “the fear of failure is running my relationship with my inbox.” It’s something about the fear/terror I feel when I go more than about 4 days without replying to someone. That’s SO not about strategy, but instead managing that panic.

Hmm… Still working this one out.

@Jo – Yeah, “what’s behind the stalling” is a very good question. Usually there’s a deeper need there that’s not yet getting met.

@Lori – Filters rock. Especially visual people who get immediately overwhelmed by the list of awaiting emails. It’s a great strategy for minimizing that visual overwhelm – for me, anyway. And yes, there’s always more we can do. Sanely, though. : )

@Sarah – OMG, imperfect, shorter responses. Holy cow! What a concept! How is that working for you? More, please?

By: Sarah Tieck

Sarah Tieck — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:12:15 +0000

I use the Gmail tasks list a lot … helps me get the stuff out of my inbox and managed … then I can prioritize things to follow up on …

The other thing that I’m learning is to write imperfect, shorter responses. I get in “trouble” when I wait until I have time to compose a “good” response … that long, newsy letter … whereas, I think my correspondents would probably be satisfied with a hello and a tidbit?!

By: Lori Paximadis

Lori Paximadis — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:16:40 +0000

I get *so much* e-mail! I have a terrible time dealing with it all, and I’m eager to hear how other people cope. The idea of scheduling dedicated time to handling it is appealing, at least for personal e-mail (my work-related e-mails fly fast and furious all day long, and there’s no getting around that). E-mail filters help a lot — mail from discussion lists I’m on and the organizations I volunteer for get sorted to their respective folders. But I feel there’s more I could be doing.
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By: JoVE

JoVE — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:16:56 +0000

I share the difficulty of deciding not to turn on computer on weekends but not doing personal e-mail during “work” time. Hmmm.

As for the ones that sit there? Sometimes my reluctance to reply is telling me something about work I don’t want to do. Getting clear on why I’m stalling can help. (And if you haven’t responded to that e-mail from August, does it really need a reply?)
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