Investing time to do something ahead of time saves time. Few people invest the time to read all their emails all the way through. For the most part, I am one of the few. I’m often asked how I manage my time effectively. One critical way is that I don’t skim email—there’s too much risk of missing critical information or creating more work by asking questions that are answered within the text. I read them start to finish, including the attachments. The easy argument for why not to do this is information overload, or that we don’t have time. I agree. However, taken in the context of the touch-it-once principle I cited in the last chapter, this becomes more manageable.

I’ve learned that by staying ahead of my emails, I garner incremental time to invest in other places. I also avoid wasted time digging for answers on my own, because I know where and who to go to for information. If you don’t know, invest time to learn. It saves time when you know the go-to contacts to fix certain problems. Additionally, you aren’t wasting time asking people to resend information or asking questions that are answered later in the email that you chose not to read thoroughly.

Effective immediately, be the person who reads one-hundred percent of your emails from top to bottom, and invests time to read the attachments. There are often pre-determined assumptions that an email isn’t relevant, or even portions of an email aren’t relevant. However, reading it will allow you to make your own determination. If you find a pattern, you can decide to stop getting them or have a conversation with the senders about their messaging so it saves both of you time. Remember, you are attaining a competitive edge by gaining knowledge, while saving time because you may be becoming the subject-matter expert.

Next, you should schedule an hour once a week to learn another piece of your own business, take an online class, or meet with someone in another line of business. Another option is for you to dedicate this time to reading interesting articles or less urgent inbox items that come in during the week. You can insert the article right into the appointment for that dedicated time. This is your chance to be curious, learn from peers, and get lingering questions answered—all while saving future time.

When you become the go-to person and have the answers, you actually save time. We say we don’t have time. What we’re really saying is we’re not willing to find the time, to invest the time, to actually save time.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

I would like to expand on the comment made in the previous blog about managing your email inbox. I used to have a position as
business support manager for a large operation. I was privy to my manager’s inbox and was asked to periodically manage it for him. I
thought it was an easy enough task—until the first time I saw his inbox and realized there were over one-thousand emails. Many were read,
while many others were not. Some were important, others were not. Some were critical, with deadlines that had passed. I had some work to
do. The most critical point when dealing with email is to touch it once. As soon as you’ve chosen to allow yourself to read it or even preview it,
you must now do something with it. Leaving it in your inbox should not be an option. Learn to touch it once.

You can effectively manage your inbox with a few easy tips. I normally filter my inbox by time with the most recent on top. However, for this
exercise, start by filtering your inbox by “Subject” and keep only the most recent one if it’s a duplicate. Next, review for topics, subjects, or senders that come on a regular basis that you don’t ever read. If you can or want to, click on unsubscribe. If you feel there may be a need to reference it in the future but don’t read it often, establish a setting to send it directly to your trash, but know that you can get to it if you need to. Next, go through your current inbox and determine which emails have tasks or follow-up required. Make actual dates to work on them. Make appointments for following through by embedding or inserting the email into the calendar appointment. Email platforms with synchronized calendars will have tutorials or help if you need further details.

Read your emails once. Even if the email catches my eye as a preview, I have a rule of thumb to deal with it as soon as it’s seen. It already distracted me, so I should put it in its proper place. We only have a few choices in how to handle it: delete it, save it to another file for future reference, move it to an appointment to do something about it later, or address it now. Touch it once.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

As I continued to come up the ranks as a new manager, I constantly heard focus group feedback about how lack of follow-through by leaders and managers was a key point of frustration for teams of employees. Whether it was to solve a problem, answer a question, or do some customer research, it didn’t matter—the same managers’ names came up time and time again. They were building a reputation—and not a good one.

Communication and follow-up are extremely important. Your ability to follow up with employees, clients, or peers is one of the clearest indications of the effectiveness of your organizational skills. When people are continually apprised of your progress, assumptions disappear and stress is greatly reduced. Even if deadlines must be extended or your progress isn’t as far along as you’d hoped, your ability to communicate that clearly to all parties builds trust in the fact that movement is taking place.

Your online calendar should be a haven for follow-up appointments. As soon as you ask someone for something or they ask you for something by a certain date, your next inclination should be to immediately add it to your calendar. Then, the pressure is off of you to remember. Once you do this a few times, it will become second nature. Specific examples include calls to return or email responses. For email requests, many online calendars allow you to embed the actual email request into the calendar appointment itself. Now you’re beginning to manage your inbox volume.

An important point to consider is to schedule these follow-up deadlines and appointments before they are due. If you owe your manager a presentation by five o’clock p.m. on Thursday, the
appointment should not be seen for the first time at five o’clock on Thursday. You can use pop-up reminders or audible cues (alarms) if you are using an online calendar tool to your advantage. If you’re still using a written calendar, you can use color coding or symbols to address urgency or action needed.

Your calendar is an important proactive tool to manage your follow-up items—not just the due dates, but the actual time to work on them and provide periodic updates to the person making the request. Be the leader who gets things done. Build the confidence of your peers, colleagues, direct reports, clients, and business partners, and never have their confidence in your ability to effectively follow up questioned.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com