I Wish I Have Time For LeanMail
You have 147 mails in your prioritize view and 239 in your Plan view and about the same in your Today view.
If this is you (or something close), then keep reading…
How can it be that LeanMail is faster than traditional email management if you feel like you don’t have time to do it?
Here is why: You simply don’t register the time you waste by clicking on mails over and over again, in the wrong order at the wrong time – because you do it incrementally.
I don’t think anyone would disagree with the idea that it’s important to prioritize what they spend their time on. Neither would anyone disagree that the fewer times one reads a mail, the more effective one is.
But if you looked in your inbox right now, you’ll notice that the majority of your mails have been read. Unless you have deleted all the unwanted mail, archived mails you want to hold on to and prioritized the mails requiring action, you have squandered your most important resource: time.
Prioritizing: It takes, on average, about one minute to prioritize 20 mails.
Building in the habit of spending one minute prioritizing your mails 3-4 times a day will not only save you time, it will ensure that you are constantly working by priority.
Planning: It takes 3 – 7 seconds to write a next action on mails that you can’t answer immediately.
If you think about it, you’re willing to re-read and re-analyze a mail 4-5 times before you actually do something about it – at a total cost of several minutes, but you don’t feel that you have the time to spend the 3 – 7 seconds to write in a next action and a deadline.
[fruitful_ibox_row]
[fruitful_ibox column=”ffs-two-one” title=”New Habit”]Build in the habit of prioritizing.[/fruitful_ibox]
[fruitful_ibox column=”ffs-two-one” title=”Benefit” last=”true”]
Use time most efficiently while previewing all mail.
Mails remain in priority order.
All waste (Muda) is gone.
All mails for safe keeping are archived.
Quick overview of mails.
Make sure that you take care of the most important mails first.
[/fruitful_ibox]
[fruitful_ibox column=”ffs-two-one” title=”New Habit”]Build in the habit of planning.[/fruitful_ibox]
[fruitful_ibox column=”ffs-two-one” title=”Benefit” last=”true”]
Avoid re-reading mails.
Avoid re-analyzing mails.
Batch work to avoid multi-tasking.
See mails when you need to see them.
Focus on what you can do, not what you can’t.
Have a clear overview of what you need to do and when.
Maintain a clean inbox without having to clean it out every now and then.
Be able to plan deadlines for mails without irritating reminders.
Never miss an important mail.[/fruitful_ibox][/fruitful_ibox_row]
How to get in the habit: Simply decide that you’ll give LeanMail a chance for one month. That’s all it takes.
Whenever you’ve been away from your e-mail for 2-3 hours, start in the 1 LeanMail view and delete, flag or archive your mail. Make sure that you have an empty view before moving to the 2 Plan view…
Now, either answer mails directly (those taking less than 2-minutes) or plan a Next action and a When day for EACH ONE. Remember that for each mail you write a Next action and When you’ve saved yourself 2-5 minutes – PER MAIL! About half way through the second week you’ll start to notice how much faster everything goes and how much more effective you are, but give it some time. Just as you don’t notice how much time you waste, it might be difficult – at least in the beginning – to see how much more you’re accomplishing.
