Holiday Emails
It’s coming round to that time of year again, so I thought it was worth putting this up to help you deal with all those post holiday emails.
If you rely on email as part of your business, you probably dread coming back from holiday to hundreds of emails. The thought of spending the first week dealing with them all, so here are a few ideas to help you deal with the backlog.
First off – move ALL the unread emails into a Holiday Email Folder. That way you can clear your Inbox and quickly scan and deal with all the new emails as they come in.
Once you've planned out the important things you need to get done on your first day back, set aside an hour to go through your Holiday Email folder. Do your priority task first then deal with your email.
First scan - DON'T READ OR RESPOND TO ANY EMAILS ON THIS SCAN. Just go through quickly and eliminate the spam and any email you know you don't need to read. Use the sort function to sort your email by sender or subject, which makes it easier to delete the junk. This should take only a few minutes.
Second scan - pick out all the priority emails you need to respond to first and flag them or place them in a separate 'Action' folder.
Set aside time to respond to your 'Action' emails – start doing this now, as you should still have plenty of time left. Go through and respond to the emails, which only need a quick two-minute response. Leave emails requiring a longer response or more thought until later in the day when you’re next planned to deal with them.
Allow yourself a few minutes to take a quick look at any new emails - in case there is anything important that needs attention, but I mean a 'few minutes'. Don't get distracted!
If you’ve still got time in the hour do the third scan - if your filters haven't already sorted out Reading emails, now is the time to place all of these in the appropriate folder(s). Remember you don’t have time to read everything and the world won’t end just because you haven’t read this week’s/month’s newsletter. Now, might also be the time to unsubscribe to those you never get round to reading anyway.
Fourth scan - deal with what's left. Less urgent action emails can now be dealt with. Anything still left? If it's not action or reading - it's probably not urgent so can be deleted.
Once you've safely dealt with the backlog that came in while you were away, then you can apply the same process to the new emails that have come in.
If you rely on email as part of your business, you probably dread coming back from holiday to hundreds of emails. The thought of spending the first week dealing with them all, so here are a few ideas to help you deal with the backlog.
First off – move ALL the unread emails into a Holiday Email Folder. That way you can clear your Inbox and quickly scan and deal with all the new emails as they come in.
Once you've planned out the important things you need to get done on your first day back, set aside an hour to go through your Holiday Email folder. Do your priority task first then deal with your email.
First scan - DON'T READ OR RESPOND TO ANY EMAILS ON THIS SCAN. Just go through quickly and eliminate the spam and any email you know you don't need to read. Use the sort function to sort your email by sender or subject, which makes it easier to delete the junk. This should take only a few minutes.
Second scan - pick out all the priority emails you need to respond to first and flag them or place them in a separate 'Action' folder.
Set aside time to respond to your 'Action' emails – start doing this now, as you should still have plenty of time left. Go through and respond to the emails, which only need a quick two-minute response. Leave emails requiring a longer response or more thought until later in the day when you’re next planned to deal with them.
Allow yourself a few minutes to take a quick look at any new emails - in case there is anything important that needs attention, but I mean a 'few minutes'. Don't get distracted!
If you’ve still got time in the hour do the third scan - if your filters haven't already sorted out Reading emails, now is the time to place all of these in the appropriate folder(s). Remember you don’t have time to read everything and the world won’t end just because you haven’t read this week’s/month’s newsletter. Now, might also be the time to unsubscribe to those you never get round to reading anyway.
Fourth scan - deal with what's left. Less urgent action emails can now be dealt with. Anything still left? If it's not action or reading - it's probably not urgent so can be deleted.
Once you've safely dealt with the backlog that came in while you were away, then you can apply the same process to the new emails that have come in.
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