Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to another episode of my Productivity Mastery series and today I want to show you how I manage my email. Now unfortunately I can't take you into my actual email because I have a lot of clients that are emailing me and it would not be good practice to share their details with you, but I do have a demo account that I have set up in Gmail where I can show you how I process my email every single morning. Now the thing is there are two parts to email. The first part is processing. You need time, preferably in the morning, to process what you have collected in your inbox. Now essentially processing is just about making a decision about what something is and whether you need to do something about it. The second part of email is actually doing it. That's actually replying to the emails that need responses and that can be done later in the day. In fact, actually it's actually better to do that later in the day simply because you don't get caught up in email ping-pong. If you reply first thing in the morning, the chances are you're going to get a reply later in the same day which therefore means you've doubled up your email. If you leave it later in the day, the chances are your reply will not come until the next day and that's when you can reset and start again. So I want to show you how I process, just basically give you an overview of how I process email. For me email is not a problem. It's quick, it's fast and I can deal with it. And just to give you some perspective, I get between 80 and 100 emails every single day and I can process, that's the part that you do in the morning, those 80 to 100 emails in around about 20 minutes. It's super fast but it does take time because you have to build that sort of muscle where you can quickly make a decision about what something is. So let's go into Gmail now and I'll show you quickly how I can process email so fast. Okay so here we are and I'm going to use Outlook to show you how to do this simply because most of us are using either Outlook or Apple Mail or Gmail and I've done videos in the past showing you how to do this in Gmail. So I thought why not use Outlook because I don't normally use Outlook but it does give you an indication of how to manage your email. Now first thing out you've got to understand there are two parts to email. The first part is processing. Now processing is all about taking this folder called Inbox and clearing it out. Now my policy on this is that I clear my email out as part of my morning routine simply because I want to get a handle on the day. I want to know if there's any meetings that have been cancelled or possibly being requested to rearrange a time or start a meeting earlier or later. Now these things I need to know so I will process my email first thing in the morning. But processing is really quite simple. So I've got one here which tells me that iTunes Connect is going to be down. I don't need to deal with that right now, but I do need to look at it so it's going into action this day. My folder, I should point out, is I generally these here ones in lowercase. These are actually built in by Gmail because this is a Gmail, as you can see, it's a Gmail account up here. The folders that I'm really interested in is my action this day and waiting for and essentially archive. So I just need to give you that because I want to show you how fast this is. Now remember this is processing first thing in the morning. Let's imagine that Nick Nanton is an employee of mine and he is asking a question because I can see the Y word there. So I'm just going to drag that into action this day. I also need to know about this because there's going to be some scheduled downtime. It's going to be in action this day. Let's imagine that Brian Tracy is my boss. Be a nice way to think of that. And have you seen the new movie? I'm thinking, okay, there's a question there. So I'm going to put that in there. Steve Dotto, imagine, is a colleague of mine. We all know the wonderful Steve Dotto and he's just sent me an informational email. Now informational emails are interesting because you've got one of two choices. Either you can delete it because you think I'm not going to look at that later, or you can archive it. Let's show, for example, in this I'm just going to archive it. Now hopefully you're beginning to see I'm explaining this as I'm going through this and I've already cleared five email. This one is, let's just say it's a spam or it's just a promotion. I don't want to see it. Brian, no, he's just an information. So I'm going to archive that just in case he asked me later. Rag & Bone is a place where I have, in the past, bought jeans and I'm looking at this thing. I'm not interested in that at the moment because right in the summer. And oh this looks interesting. Into action this day. Now I'm not needing to go into these emails in detail at this stage. Remember the goal here is to clear this inbox. So Nick's here. It's just archive. Don't need to see that. That's a question. I'm going to put that into action this day. Nick, let's just imagine I need to do something with that. This webinar is basically a copy of what happened before. So I'm just going to delete that and that's a reminder. I'll just delete that. I don't need to worry about it. And let's imagine that I need to action that and this. And basically what I'm doing is I am looking at this part of the email. Now, I hope nine times out of ten, I'm going to get the answer as to whether I need to action this email or not simply from that first paragraph. Now, if I don't, of course, I have to spend a few extra seconds and go a little bit further down, but in this case I just need to archive that. And that one is, oh thank you, Brian. I needed to know that, but I don't need to action it. That's I'm going to delete that one. This is another reminder. Delete that one. And this is actually really quite like what I normally get when I'm dealing with email in the morning. I need to look at that later. So it's again it's going into action this day. I'm going to put that into action this day because it's an update on a meeting that we're going to have. Again, I don't need to see that, but I might want to look at it later. So just keep it around. This is it's time to reset. So we may have a big off-site meeting for that. Let's say that's goals. I've got to deal with that. And I don't need to deal with this. And that can be archived. This one I don't really need to do anything with. And again, all I'm doing is I'm looking at my first few lines to give me an indication of whether I need it. This one here, I might need to come back to it later, but I'm just going to keep it archived because right now I'm not that interested in dealing with it. Brian, my boss, remember, needs to deal with that. Rag and bone, let's just delete that one. And Simon is a colleague, oh sorry, Simon, let's imagine that Simon is a client of mine. So it goes into action this day. Anything from a client is immediately going to go into action this day. I don't need to see it. So in the space of just a few minutes, and while I'm explaining it, I have cleared my inbox. There was 30 emails in there and you can see how fast that is. Now when I'm not speaking, of course, it can be a lot faster and I'm not creating a story. Now this folder here, now this is something that I will come back to later in the day. Now I don't like to come back to this email immediately, this folder immediately, unless in those rare occasions there is something really important that I need to deal with. But here I will come back to this sometime, usually between 4 p.m. and say 7 p.m. I like actually to do my email after dinner because it's quieter, there's not a lot going on, and I like to do that. Now the first thing, and this is something that I really strongly advise those of you who are using like Apple Mail or Outlook, is to go into this icon up here, which is called the filter and sort. Click on that and you want to change this to the oldest on top. Now there's a reason for doing this. When you have the oldest on top, you are not going to be as tempted to cherry-pick your email because by its very nature, the oldest email is going to be the most urgent. The one that you need to respond to. Now the second reason for doing this is you get these wonderful flowcharts going. So let's just say with this one, this is a long question that I need to deal with and I reply to this, it might take me say 10 or 20 minutes. This one, which came in again last week, is from my boss, Brian, just for demonstration purposes and I'm thinking, all right, I just need to say yes I'm in. So now we've got a 10 minute email, now a two minute, or maybe even 30 second email. And as you go down this, you're dealing with the emails. Now on those really busy days, when you are really tired out, you might only deal with, say, the top five because you're just really tired out. So let's just clear those. But what's happened is you've actually cleared off the most time-sensitive emails because you've dealt with the oldest first. And this is what I really really like about changing the order of your action this day folder. That means that the oldest one, so this one came in at 6 a.m. this morning, I don't need to deal with that. And if I'm really busy today, I can deal with that tomorrow. It's no big deal. So these ones all came in today. This is usually what happens. I might have one here that is from yesterday just because I basically ran out of time. So you can actually, when you operate this system, you can use email in a timed basis. You might say, okay I'm going to deal with email for 30 minutes, and you just start at the top and work your way down. And if you're consistent with this every single day, I can promise you, you will stay on top of your email. So just to recap, first of all, inbox. That's your first step. That's what we call processing. Processing is not doing. And forget about the two-minute rule. The two-minute rule, all you need is ten emails that you think, oh that will take me two minutes. Well, now you've blown 20 minutes. 20 minutes, I can clear a hundred emails. So I'm going to focus on clearing my inbox. That's the first step. You get that inbox clear. Then, some point later in the day, go into your action this day, make sure that you've reversed the order. So it's the oldest at the top is going to be the most important. Now I know some people are going to use flagged as a way to filter their emails. I don't even need to worry about that because I know when it comes to email, time is the essence. Not necessarily whether something is important or not. I don't need that added extra layer of complexity. So hopefully that's given you a good overview of how to get on top of your email and stay on top of your email. Now if you're interested, I do have an online course called Email Mastery that you can enrol in that will help you to fully set up whatever email program you're using this system. Now I should point out Gmail is not going to allow you to reverse the order in your action this day folder. It just doesn't allow you to do that. Apple Mail does. I know that Outlook does, as you can see here. So hopefully you've got some value from this. Thank you so much for watching and it just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week. Hello. Thank you very much for watching my videos. Now I have something exciting to tell you about. Recently, I have developed a brand new time management system. It's a system designed to manage your time in the 21st century. The world has changed a lot over the last 20 years. In fact, it's actually changed a lot this year. And what we need now is a system, a time management system, that is very easy to use, easy to maintain, so that you can spend more of your time doing the work. And that's what the Time Sector System is all about. It's going to change your whole belief system about the way a time management system should work because this focuses on when. When you are going to do the task. And let's be honest, it doesn't matter how motivated, inspired, or how urgent something is, if you don't have time to do it, it is never going to get done. And that's what this system is built around. Getting your work done so you can spend more of your time doing the things that you want to do. I hope you join me in this course. The full details of the course are in the show notes below. So please join me and thank you very much for watching this brief video.