Try this email attack plan

Right. Today soldiers we are going to tackle the bane of my existence and a problem that I know most of you have too – managing email.

This is becoming an increasing issue for me for a couple of reasons.

The first thing is that my inbox is so huge that the IT team come over to my desk about three times a week and beg me to cut it back.

I always look at them blankly, and claim that I did it two days ago. They roll their eyes and tell me I didn’t. We agree to disagree, which means I let someone else clean my mess up.

The second problem is that I get a huge number of emails. Huge. So big I feel I could spend all day just responding to stuff from people.

I’ve been trying lots of different techniques to deal with the crush, but I came across a new one from the founder of group buying site Living Social, Tim O’Shaughnessy, that I really like.

He likes to look at his emails with a simple test: Can I respond in less than 30 seconds?

If he can’t respond that quickly, it puts the email aside and ploughs through all these emails in daily one-hour session dedicated to this task.

I’m giving it a go and it seems to be working. My inbox isn’t necessarily shrinking, but I’m not feeling so overwhelmed.

Get it done – today!