The Working Blog
Working Tips, Working Chronicles, Working Confidence
Forgetting to send important details or follow-up can be the difference between a hectic week, spending too much time in your inbox unnecessarily or having a productive flowing week. It's common knowledge that work stress can wreak havoc on your memory. The good news is that Google and Outlook in particular have built into their email feature the ability to schedule emails without having to use a 3rd party. This feature is key to saving you time, keeping all your drafts and responses in one place and also helping you to take control of your work day and week by not having to try and remember all the little details. I schedule these 4 types of emails on a regular basis so that I can spend more time outside of my inbox and more time working on the more important things of the day. These ideas are very helpful disciplines to develop and can easily be tasked to a virtual assistant when you are ready to pursue one. 1. Schedule email follow-ups before and after meetings. Many meetings are recurring and this is the optimal time to go ahead and schedule as far in advance as you can those reminder emails and follow-up emails, allowing you to focus more on the actual meeting than all the follow-ups you have to make. Saving these emails as templates and drafts that can be modified later saves you time so that you no longer have to create your email content from scratch. 2. Schedule emails to discuss ideas and solutions or questions. This is one of my top ideas because it doesn't matter what time late at night the idea comes, you can have it hit the inbox of your intended recipient at a time where they will be most likely to receive it, view it and respond. I have even left notes that informed the recipient this is a scheduled email and that I would be online at a certain time to be available to chat more about it. It gives the recipient an option to respond now or catch you as soon as you are online. 3. Schedule emails check-ins with colleagues. Sometimes a quick follow-up that says “hello” and “checking in to see how things are going” and if there is anything they may need your assistance with, goes a long way. We all get busy and scheduling your check-ins will help you stay connected and build a team trust with your colleagues. 4. Schedule yourself emails as reminders/to-do’s Many of us take action better from our inbox versus using a running online or on paper task list. If it's a task that really needs your attention, schedule it to come to you as an email reminder instead. Take time to put enough detail in the body of the email to take the action you need to take with the task. Additional Helpful Tips! Set up your “out of office” for timeframes that you will be away or working offline. Google and Outlook and even Yahoo have an out of office auto-responder that can be set when you need it. Sometimes you will need to block your time or days to focus on deadlines or simply out of the office for an appointment, on vacation. Setting up an auto-responder can help redirect and give the respondent alternatives to getting what they may need. You can indicate that you are in the office but working within a time block that are simply unavailable and give them instructions who to contact in cases of urgency. Change your subject line! As the subject matter shifts in email dialog, shift the subject line to reflect the new topic. It is quite common that conversations by email shift and change as the conversation keep going. New ideas, solutions and answers come and can easily get lost. By changing the subject line to continue the conversation, this makes referring back to that specific subject in the conversation much easier when you need to search for it as a reminder! Declutter your inbox at least every year! If your inbox has too much old clutter, making it difficult to focus on what’s most relevant, here is a post I created on how to bring back order to your inbox. I suggest at least every year doing this for your sanity! If you can manage 2 times a year, that would be ideal.
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AuthorNherie is a creative freelancer who enjoys creativity, teaching & writing about best administrative or business practices and virtual assisting. Archives
January 2022
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