April 2006 Archives

One of the common frustrations I hear from people regarding email is the feeling of being not only swamped, but "at the mercy" of their inbox. When email arrives they feel they have to act on it right away, regardless of whatever they're doing.

Factoring in the "New Mail" sound of many email programs, it becomes Pavlovian - we hear the sound and like a well trained puppy we go check our email, interrupting whatever we were doing.

Who's controlling who? Or rather, what's controlling you?

At a conference a couple of years ago, a good friend made a simple suggestion had improved his productivity dramatically. You almost could feel the productivity of the room increase as others implemented his oh-so-simple suggestion.

As I've said before, and probably will say again, understanding how your email client processes message rules and then using that feature is perhaps the single most effective thing you can do to help get your email under control. Rules really are that powerful.

So today I'm going to look at creating just one rule, the one rule I consider to be the most important rule you can have. So important that I'll call it The Golden Rule.

The popular Golden Rule goes something like this: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Our golden rule isn't really all that different, at least in intent. It's more along the lines of "Prioritize the people you know."

If I could have only one message rule, this would be it.