Do you feel overwhelmed by the amount of email you have to deal with every day? Or do you have hundreds of email messages sitting in your inbox? You’re not alone. In this episode, Brooks and Mike revisit the Asian Efficiency email workflow and share some important updates to make your email processing even more efficient so you can get (and keep) a state of Inbox Zero.
We interviewed over 30 people recently on their biggest pain points when it comes to email and achieving the coveted state of Inbox Zero. Most of the email that came into their inbox they had no problem with, but there was one kind of email that popped up over and over again that gave them pause and quickly caused their inbox to get backed up. We share how to solve this one common email problem that causes many email to quickly get backed up in your inbox. We walk you through the updates we’ve made to the AE email workflow that will allow you to process any email that comes into your inbox with ease. We’ve been testing this process with beta testers and are thrilled with the results we’ve been getting, so if you struggle to stay on top of your email (or if it takes you longer than 30 minutes per day to process it all) then you don’t want to miss this episode.
Cheat Sheet
- What Mike learned from interviewing 30+ people about their biggest email and inbox management problems 2:06
- How and why we changed the original Asian Efficiency email workflow 6:30
- 2 essential email concepts you need to know 9:40
- How to use the two-minute rule to decide if you should take action on an email 16:30
- The AE Email Workflow v. 2.0: The 5 different types of email 22:20
- Why integrating a task manager with your email client can save you a lot of time 28:15
- How to overcome mental hurdles to delete emails that you don’t need 34:24
- Ways to teach your team how to be better at email 40:41
- What to do with emails that fall into the reference category 41:48
- How to deal with “time-sensitive reference email that requires eventual action” 45:23
- 5 tips to help you process your email more efficiently 50:24
- How to curate your read-it-later service so you don’t get overwhelmed (and why it’s ok to not read everything) 57:55
- Why you should turn off email notifications 1:02:34
Links
- Postbox
- Airmail
- OmniFocus
- Email – Inside OmniFocus
- Spark
- Overlap: A simple strategy for closing the gap between where you are and where you want to be w/ Sean McCabe (TPS163)
- Evernote
- OneNote
- BusyContacts
- Instapaper
- Advanced Strategies for Reading Faster and Remembering More w/ Abby Marks-Beale (TPS159)
- Inbox Detox
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