During the day, scan the subject lines of incoming mail for urgent messages, but avoid opening messages. Set aside a block of time each day to read your email, and then sort the messages by subject this way you can deal with messages on the same subject in one go. Use informative subject lines. This saves the time of other people reading your email. Kate Sherwood s web page has good advice on designing effective email messages.
Many employers have concerns about the amount of time their staff spend reading email.
While it s important to keep abreast of professional issues, it s easy to get distracted into the latest debate on the Phantom Menace . One way to efficiently coordinate email reading is for a team to agree on who reads particular lists, and those people pass on relevant messages to the rest of the team. Unfortunately most of the NZ lists don t offer this option, but if it is available, it can reduce the number of messages you get. Read the messages in an archive. Many email discussion groups have an archive site on the Web where messages can be read.