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You’re not alone if you have a love/hate relationship with email. As much as we’ve come to rely on it for efficient communication, no one enjoys an overwhelming pileup of messages to read. Thankfully, learning how to manage your email inbox can be quite simple. Let’s start by taking a look at the six inbox management tips listed below.
It’s 9am. You sit down at your desk, power up your computer, and you’re greeted with three dozen new emails. What should you do? Should you start at the top and just work your way down? Should you pick up where you left off yesterday? No and no.
The best way to tackle your inbox in the morning is to start by opening emails from a specific set of people. In most cases, this will be your manager or a small list of high-priority business associates. Though it may require some will power, leave all of your other messages unread until you’ve at least taken preliminary action (more on this in #2) on what’s most important.
Do not use your inbox in place of a schedule or to do list. We repeat. Do not use your inbox in place of a schedule or to do list. This widely used practice is one of the main reasons that so many people struggle to control their inboxes.
Instead, think of checking your email as a time to get organized. Start by creating a sorting system that allows you to easily keep track of your emails by either subject matter or priority level. Then, come up with a plan for swiftly tackling new messages. If a response will take you two minutes or less, go ahead and handle it right away. But, if a new email requires more extensive action on your part, move it to its respective folder, and block out time on your calendar to handle it.
One of the easiest ways to simplify the sorting process, and in turn, control your inbox, is to use descriptive subject lines. For example, instead of the ambiguous title, “Question,” write, “Question About XYZ Project.” This way, when you get a response, you won’t have to open the email to remember what the exchange was about. Not only will this make it faster to sort your messages, but it will also ensure that the email is easily discoverable if you’re searching for it again later.
Another simple way to manage inbox clutter is to simply reduce what’s cluttering it. This starts with the obvious: hitting the “unsubscribe” button. While it might seem faster to archive or delete promotional emails as they come in, it’s better to avoid future distractions altogether by yanking weeds from the root.
As for the subscriptions that you actually want to receive, set up a dedicated email for this very purpose—one that’s safe to check much less frequently. Use this email address for social media notifications, newsletters, online shopping, or in any instance where you expect to receive follow-ups, such as when making a donation or engaging in a political cause.
Speaking of reducing distractions, you’ll make your life much easier by using each of your email accounts solely for their intended purposes. While this sounds obvious, many people, especially the self-employed, end up intermingling their communications. The result is a daunting “Unread” number and an unnecessarily long sorting process. Keep things simple by using your work email strictly for work. Don’t share it with your friends or family, and never use it to subscribe to anything, unless it’s truly necessary to do your job.
Even if you do a phenomenal job staying on top of your emails, it’s a great idea to dedicate time each week to dealing with messages that might have slipped through the cracks. Many people like to do this at the end of the week so they can start the following week fresh. Schedule an hour on Friday, or however long you need, to delete, archive, unsubscribe, sort, schedule, or respond to whatever remains in your inbox.
Did we miss any of your go-to inbox management tips? Tweet us @Cydcor and let us know how you manage your email inbox!
We all wish we had more hours in the day; that’s pretty much universal. After all, time is a finite resource and once it’s gone it never comes back again. How can you make sure you’re making the most of the 6,720 waking minutes you get a week? Time tracking! That’s right, tracking your time is an invaluable tool to help you maximize your productivity and help you craft the ideal life for yourself.
Time tracking isn’t a new phenomenon. But have you ever tried it for yourself? Looking at how, when and where you devote time and energy can give you an objective view of your days and a baseline from which to make positive adjustments.
Choose Your Time Buckets
Designate different categories―or buckets―for tasks you perform throughout the day. For example, they may have headers like Client Meetings, Administrative, Professional Development, Fun, Relationships, Distractions and so on. Aim to have no more than ten different time buckets. This will help to give you a strong and easy-to-digest data format to work from while you are tracking your time. Also, be sure to record how exactly you are spending your time within those buckets. It helps to know that the specific thing you were doing in the Relationships time bucket last week was making dinner with your partner.
Envision Your Ideal Schedule
Next plot out how much time you would ideally like to devote to each of your categories by percentage. If career growth is a big goal of yours, you may want to devote a larger percentage of your time each week to your professional development time bucket than you currently are. If you are looking to increase your sales number, maybe you add a bit more to your client meetings time bucket. Remember, this schedule should represent what you want your life to look like, not how your time is currently spent. Turn this data into a spread sheet so it can be transformed into a pie chart. (It’s helps to have visual aids when time tracking!)
Track that Time
There’s no one right way to track time. Rather, you need to find an approach that works for you. You can simply jot your records down in a pocket notebook, or you can use a high-tech solution like the app Toggl. It really depends on what your personal preference is. You also need to decide when you are going to track your time. Some people find it easiest to check in every hour or 15 minutes. Some prefer to log the exact time they start a task and then when they switch to another task. Again, find what works for you. The most important thing is to make tracking your time a habit, so find an approach you feel you can stick with. Remember to be honest with yourself. Your data is only as good as it is thorough. Track you time for at least two weeks to a month. This will help account for any normal day-to-day fluctuations.
Analyze
After you finish the time tracking period you decided on at the start, it’s time to dig into all that important data you unearthed. You can also make a pie graph out of this data to compare against your ideal. What you find may be surprising. Everyone is different, but there are some common time tracking insights that you may see in your own life. They include:
Placing your time tracking data side-by-side with what you envision as your ideal time management structure will give you a solid understanding of how you spend the limited amount of time that you have each week. This baseline knowledge is helpful in moving yourself in a positive direction and achieving your life goals.
Ah, productivity. It seems so simple, doesn’t it? Make a to-do list, prioritize it, then get to work! In reality, we all know this is much easier said than done. Thankfully, there are several surprisingly simple productivity tips and tricks that we can implement to make the most of our time. Check out the four productivity tips below.
1. Implement a Daily Drink and Think
Let’s kick off this list with a productivity tip that’s sure to sound counter-intuitive: Sit down and do nothing.
Yes, really!
One of the best things you can do for yourself is to take 10 minutes a day to just think. Sit down in the morning with your coffee or tea, or at night after a relaxing bath or tucking in the kids. Find somewhere relatively quiet where no one will bother you. Put away your devices. Ponder your day, think about what’s important, and pay attention to what rises to the surface. When you’re done, revise your to-do list as you see fit.
2. Empty your Brain
If you’ve ever watched a survivalist competition on TV, you’ve seen how important it is to conserve resources and be strategic about energy expenditure. Navigating through daily life is no different.
One of the best ways to conserve mental energy is to write everything down, rather than holding thoughts in the back of your mind. Did you just remember that a report is due at the end of the week? Add it to your calendar. Did a great idea just pop into your head? Jot it down. Doing so will make it easier to focus on the task in front of you, upping your productivity.
3. Set a Series of Timers
Depending on your style of working, this productivity tip has the potential to skyrocket your efficiency. This can be particularly effective when there’s an item on your to-do list that you’ve been dreading or if you’re a person who works best under pressure.
Start small. Set a timer for 20 minutes. Force yourself to use every millisecond of the time block to do focused work. Zero funny business allowed while the clock is ticking. Challenge yourself to see how much you can get done in this window. Then, when the timer goes off, set another one for 5 minutes. This time is your reward. Use it to grab a snack, check Instagram, text your mom, or do anything that will register in the pleasure center of your brain. Then repeat. Try playing around with longer working blocks.
4. Create a Must-Do List
Different from your to-do list, this should contain 3 to 5 items that absolutely, no matter what, need to be completed today. You can vary the length of the list based on the heft of the tasks, but the key is to identify which activities are non-negotiable. Tell yourself that you can’t leave work or even go to bed until they are done.
There are a few reasons this works so well. First, the commitment to yourself alone is very powerful. No one wants to let themselves down. Second, human nature is to avoid pain. If you don’t want to work all night, you’ll put the pressure on yourself to ramp up your productivity during the day. Your Must-Do list will serve as an anchor to stay focused on your priorities when you’re tempted to stray.
How do you make the most out of your day? Share your favorite productivity tips with Cydcor on social media!
There are only so many hours in a day, and you only have so many resources at your command. Luckily, there are a number of productivity tips you can embrace in order to get more done. Learn how to save time, increase productivity, and take control of your day. Incorporating these five productivity hacks into your routine can make all the difference in achieving your goals.
It’s fairly common knowledge that it is vital to create long term goals for yourself, to give yourself something to strive for. What you may not have considered is that giving yourself a deadline to work against can actually improve productivity! If there is an end date you need to have a project completed by, it’s much harder for you to procrastinate.
To get an early jump on your day, start planning for it the evening before. You should examine your schedule for the upcoming day to start planning out how you are going to organize work hours. Do all of your appointments make sense as they are scheduled? Do you have any materials you need to review ahead of time?
Set aside blocks of time to make phone calls or to complete tasks between meetings. Once you have the general shape of your day mapped out, write out your to-do list for the day. Capture all the important tasks that you want to complete the next day and rank them by level of priority. Choose your outfit and set it aside. You may even want to take 15 minutes and make your lunch ahead of time. That way you can get up and go immediately without any lost time.
It’s easy to get caught up in the mentality of working wherever and whenever you can manage to. Time management and being productive when you're working from home is just as important as workplace productivity. While a stop at the coffee shop to knock out a few items on the to-do list may be helpful, it’s important for you to make your home workspace your own.
Start by decluttering your space. A space free of clutter sets the appropriate mental tone to maintain your focus. This should also help to minimize distractions that may take you off task. Consider using a program to block social media and other websites where you like to spend personal time. It can be really easy to get lost in your friends’ vacation pictures when you should be taking care of business.
The first thing many of us do when we wake up is check our email. Don’t! Break yourself of this time draining habit. Stay on top of your correspondence, yes, but don’t let it dictate your schedule. Part of learning how to increase productivity is to taking control of your time. Set aside a predetermined amount of time early in the day to address emails. Start with the most critical ones, and work downwards by level of importance. If you don’t get to a lower priority email during your allotted time, it can wait until later in the day after you have completed your most crucial tasks.
You may be tempted to go full force without stopping to achieve your daily goals. However, in order to be more productive overall, MIT Senior Lecturer Bob Pozen suggests that a bit of a break allows your brain the opportunity to take advantage of one of our body’s built-in productivity hacks. That time lets your brain switch modes so it can actually process and organize all the information that has been flowing through it.
Try setting aside a period of time once a week for to conduct a review of all of your activity from the previous week. This can give you the opportunity to clean up any lingering action items, get up to date on your progress towards your goals, and gives you some time to think creatively about how you want to invest your energy going forward. Giving yourself space to breathe and collect yourself is an important step in learning how to increase productivity in a sustainable manner.
In order to truly master your life and your time, it’s important to stay focused on what you need to do and how you need to do it. These productivity hacks will help you master your own potential and stay in the present moment. Practice them every day, and soon you will be unstoppable!
When you think of productivity, being constantly active might come to mind. But while always being in motion can improve your productivity at times, it can also lead to mindless “productivity” where you waste time doing something that you don’t need to do.
The real trick is to work intelligently. Great time management skills are the first step to becoming a smart worker. Here are some helpful time management techniques that will help increase your productivity.
Do regular reviews of your productivity and take action to resolve issues with your productivity. You might want to do reviews either weekly or monthly—not so often that you begin wasting time evaluating everything, but not so far apart that their benefit is diluted.
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Delegation: Learning to trust your colleagues in helping you complete work is an ability that some struggle with. However, everyone will need help every once in a while; be it covering for you while you are on vacation, handling an emergency situation, or taking on a task simply too large to handle alone.
Communication is important. Be sure to tell your team member or co-worker the key goals of your project or work being handled with a client. Also be sure to give them all the resources available, along with relevant contact information and documents.
Lists: Despite our best intentions, many to-do items can get lost in the fray of our everyday lives. Writing things down and creating lists is a great way to manage and check-off tasks that have been completed.
For larger tasks, break them down into multiple, smaller tasks. For example, writing a ten-page document can be pared down to creating two pages a day up to its deadline.
One of the most satisfying aspects of creating a to-do list is crossing off things when they are done. It gives you a sense of accomplishment and gives you a visualization of progress for tasks both large and small.
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Breaks: Studies have shown that spending more than eight hours a day at a desk without moving around much is detrimental to one’s energy level and focus. Productivity is not measured by the number of hours sitting at your desk, but by how much work you get done.
Many recommend getting up every hour for a ten-minute break to walk, stretch and drink some water and socialize with your co-workers.
Goals: Set ambitious, yet realistic goals. Create goals both in your professional and personal lives. One of biggest reasons why people don’t succeed with their goals is because they didn’t set a deadline. Goals should be specific, measurable, and they should be written down. It is also good to get feedback about the goals in order to refine them.
According to Oracle, sales people spent 78% of their time looking for leads. That leaves very little time for actual selling, especially when relationship building is so crucial to making the sale. So how can one manage leads and spend more time selling? Here are some tips from Cydcor Sales Blog.
Start by organizing your leads into categories of likelihood. One for people who have bought from you before. Two for people who have expressed interest. Three for people you think would really benefit from your product or service. And four for completely cold leads. Categories one and two should take up most of your time, building relationship.
Think of the 80/20, which says that eighty percent of sales come form twenty percent of our clients. Many sales people and entrepreneurs alike are happier and more profitable when they make the most time for happy, enduring customers. That is why it is crucial to structure and evolve your business in a way that will bring in streams of income from your best customers. Whether that is a continued service, multiple services or new products, one must keep core clients happy and interested.
When generating new leads, stay within your network. You may need to cold call sometimes, but be smarter about it. Instead of spending time making calls to a list of a thousand, do research on a hundred and know why they need your business before you call. You will come off as more diligent, certain and provide your lead with information more relevant to them than a script. It also gives you time to ask questions.
If you need new perspective on what your customers are looking for, take a few past customers or customers of your competition out to lunch. Ask them what they like about their experience as a customer. Focus on the traits you hear in positive feedback and make them your main selling points. Take the time to build strategy around who your customers are and what they really need.
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