Peter's Blog

For many people email is a tool preventing them from being productive. Email sometimes even controls the day. The Getting Things Done methodology has a a great workflow that will allow you to completely get in control. But it may seem overwhelming when looking to implement. Some simple tips can already drastically reduce your email overload.

When an email comes in take a moment to consider what it actually is. Are you the intended recipient? If it is someone else and the topic is irrelevant to your job consider deleting the email. It takes some courage at first to implement this step, but it will be amazing to notice how the amount of email goes down already by practicing this step.

As a second step start applying the 2 minute rule as practiced within Getting Things Done: when actionable and it can be done within 2 minutes: do it! Otherwise defer the action to a later moment. In that case, file the email in an action list and move it out of the inbox. Try these simple steps and let me know how it benefits you. Next time I will share some additional simple steps you can take.

This step towards increased productivity was originally published in the Simoons & Company monthly newsletter