Bit Literacy Tips On Managing Email

Book & Product Reviews

Bit Literacy – Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload is a book written by Mark Hurst. It covers many different tips to help improve your productivity in today’s age of information overload.

We reviewed Mark’s book here last Sunday. And yesterday we started going deeper into Mark’s Bit Literacy. Let’s continue today with some advice that you will probably only consider in dire circumstances.

I do find this inspiring. A little scary. But still inspiring.

Here is one more simple way to improve your productivity.

Beyond Email Overload

One of the things Mark presents in his book is a very effective style of handling email overload.

His first step may be the hardest.

• Delete all the mail in you inbox.

Drastic as this may seem, if you follow this process through you will no longer be bogged down by an inbox with hundreds or thousands of emails in your inbox. These hundreds of mails just show how much work we have, or appear to have.

Mark says you should do this daily and keep your inbox in a steady-state of emptiness.

In his own company he says he actually uses this process as a set of rules.

The first rule is “read personal mail first”. You might find this hard to accept. Mark believes that telling your employees that their family is low priority to all other email, including the interoffice memo, is simply bad for the morale.

Here is a brief outline of his email management system:

1. Read personal mail first
2. Delete all spam
3. Engage FYIs and action items, then delete

• Delete FYI after reading
• Any action that can be done in under 2 minutes, do it
• Any action that takes more than 2 minutes gets assigned to the todo list

Delete every email from your inbox as soon as you do it or as soon as you move it to your todo list. The todo list becomes your actionable item list, your inbox is empty and some emails have been filed where appropriate.

Newsletters And Bulk Mailing

These are read as much as needed, then deleted. If you have 2 consecutive newsletters, delete them both. If you have not read the old one yet, you probably never will.

FYI Email

These are emails that only give you information and do not require you to take real action. These are the true informational emails. Some need filing, some require a note on your calendar and maybe some other administrative action. Do the required action and delete the mail from your inbox.

To Do’s

Use the 2 minute rule. If you can do it in two minutes, get up and do it. If you need more than two minutes to complete the action assign it to your to do list. Once you have done the action or moved the action to your to do list, delete the mail.

How To Get Rid Of All Your Old Mail

Since an inbox will not be empty when you read this, Mark has also supplied a way to clear out your old mail.

• Sort by subject and look for newsletters with several issues. Delete them. If you have not read them you won’t. If you need to file them for posterity, then file them and delete them from your inbox. File delete.
• Find FYI and CC mails by sorting your mail by subject. Delete the ones that you know you can. File delete.

Next sort by date with oldest message on top.

• If the message is FYI, scan, file, delete.
• If the message requires action follow the 2 minute rule then file, delete.
• The bigger action items are easy to deal with, they go to the todo list and then file and delete.

This is not a halfway solution. Do this once, even if it takes a full day, until your inbox is empty. After the fist cleaning you will decide if you do mail twice a day or leave it open all the time. No matter what how often you decide to check your emails, when you close your inbox it has to be empty.

• File, scan, action, delete.

Once you are done with this process you will be able to spend more time actually working on other projects. You will have more time for your real job… or for your hobbies.

Read more Book Reviews:

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Here are reviews of the books I have read recently to help me with communication for international sales:

• A Writer’s Guide To Powerful Paragraphs By Victor C. Pellegrino
• Content Rich By Jon Wuebben
• Get Content Get Customers by Joe Pulizzi & Newt Barrett
• Letting Go Of The Words – Writing Web Content That Works By Janice Redish
• Stories That Sell By Casey Hibbard
• The Culturally Customized Web Site By Nitish Singh And Arun Pereira
• The Magic Of Pre-Writing By Steven Osborne
• The Secret To Writing A Successful And Outstanding Blog By Liz Strauss

International Sales

Here are reviews of the books I have read recently to help me with international sales:

• All of the Little Sales Books by Jeffrey Gitomer
• Asinine Advertising By Herschell Gordon Lewis
• Influencer: The Power To Change Anything by Kerry Patterson – Joseph Grenny – David Maxfield – Ron McMillian & Al Switzler

International Web Marketing

Here are reviews of the books I have read recently to help me with international web marketing:

• Bit Literacy Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload By Mark Hurst
• Dotcomology The Science Of Making Money Online By Stone Evans
• How The Internet Works By Preston Gralla
• How to Win Sales & Influence Spiders By Catherine Seda
• Landing Page Optimization By Tim Ash
• Mastering Online Marketing By Mitch Meyerson
• Multichannel Marketing By Akin Arikan
• Online Competitive Intelligence By Helen P. Burwell
• ProBlogger by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett
• Stats Faceslap By Ed Rivis
• The Ultimate Web Marketing Strategy By Ed Rivis
• Website Optimization by Andrew B. King

Here are some Product Reviews:

• Ed Rivis’ Stats Faceslap
• Success Chef’s Marketing E.S.P.
• The Management Tools I Use For Content Created To Be Re-Packaged
• The Ultimate Desktop Copy Coach By Tony Flores
  
• Web Video University And International Marketing
  

All of the book and product reviews here are totally unsolicited… spontaneous …and without affiliate links. These are books I have read recently and only the ones that I share with friends. So all of the reviews you find here are on books and products that I highly recommend.

Also, as these are books and products that I have recently read since, this is not a list of my all-time favorite books. Hopefully I will get around to reviewing my favorite culture and international business books sometime soon.

Use these skills in your international tactics on the…
Get International Clients International Sales Road Map:

Guide To Multichannel Marketing • Do you know how to communicate with different countries? This guide shows you how

Guide To International Web Marketing • Do you know how to pull all of your different international marketing pieces together? This guide shows you how

Step 5 – Connect With Your International Markets Connect… • With culture customized content • With trust and empathy • With strong cross-cultural communication

International Business Success Basics • Do you feel at a loss with regards to dealing with international business? This guide gives you the background information you need right from the start.

Tagged as: bit literacy, book review, Manage email