Don’t let emails cramp your workflow

Singapore - Emails may have made workplace communication a breeze, but employee productivity can be reduced when employees do not utilise their time on emails effectively.

Instead of wasting time sifting through every email, which increases work stress, employees can simply adjust their priorities when it comes to organising incoming emails. People Potential Asia's Lewis Chen, a trainer specialising in personal productivity, says every time an email lands in the inbox, employees simply need to prioritise its importance level and execute it accordingly. "First, ask yourself, ‘What type of action do you want to take on an email?'."

After a decision has been made on the particular email, Chen says employees only need to file it accordingly into four folders, which allows them to retrieve or execute emails efficiently. This helps them to save time on unimportant emails, be less distracted when doing other work and improve work flow and time management. Besides reducing hundreds of emails in the inbox tray, Chen say workers will reduce their stress levels because they don't have to worry about emails being missed and would be able to take on more work as well.

Another rule of thumb in sorting out emails' importance level, says Chen, is learning when to delete them. "You delete it when you don't want to refer to it anymore or in the future, but if you want to refer it, you can file it to retrieve it at a later point."

Tips on reducing email stress:

1. Once the email is in, decide what action you want to take in an instant and sort the email into one of four folders: "Yes - Soon", "Yes - When free", "Maybe" and "No".
2. If you choose "Yes - Soon", it means execute or reply immediately.
3.  "Yes - When free" means set a reminder so you can come back to it on a later date or time.
4. "Maybe" means it is of low importance and has low time sensitivity.
5. "No" allows you to delete emails either on the spot or end of the workday.