The never-ending deluge of email creates stress for many of us.  Like many folks, I get a ton of email every day.  It is one of those parts of my job that I can’t control.  People can send two minutes writing an email with a few open-ended questions that could take 30 minutes to answer.  An accumulation of 25 emails might take me 1o minutes to process, or several hours.  That’s what I mean about not being able to control it.  But not being able to control it doesn’t mean that I can’t manage it.

Here are some steps that anyone can take to reduce the stress created by our email:

• Deal with each email in turn. I don’t know about you, but I have a tendency to take care of emails that I address quickly.  This shrinks the list and gives me the impression of productivity, but often leaves me with the more daunting ones that I tend to procrastinate with.  That results in a backlog of waiting emails, ones that I’m trying to avoid anyway.  Instead, as you go through each email, take one of the following actions:

1. Delete it. If no further action is required, then delete it.  Don’t leave it in your inbox.  Some of us want to do that in case we ever need to refer back to it at a later date, but most email software, such as Outlook or Entourage, keep a copy of anything you delete in a folder.
2. Delegate it. If the required action is someone else’s to take, forward the email.  Keep your remarks to the minimum needed.
3. Do it. If the required action is yours to take, determine if that action can be accomplished in two minutes or less.  If so, git ‘er done.
4. Put it into your @Action folder – If the required task is yours to take, but that task will take you more than two minutes, save it off in this folder to address later.  This is the folder that you will go through in your Weekly Review, which I discussed in a post earlier in the week.

• Put time in your schedule – Set up time to work your email, much as you would make time for any other important task.  Acting like we can absorb all that email management work is delusional.  And there’s something deep inside us that knows that we really can’t do that.  Instead, that part of us knows that we’re going to spend time tonight after we get the kids in bed trying to catch up.  I am setting up two times per day to check and process my email – once in the morning and another time before I head home.

• Turn off your notifier – All those great notifiers (on our Outlook or Entourage or iPhone) that tell us when we have new emails are terribly distracting.  They draw us away from whatever we were concentrating on.  I turned them off and leave all my email for my scheduled email times.  I felt immediate relief from the stress of the mounting pile.  What good does it do me to think and fret about the growing mound of emails that have come in?  All that doesn’t help me one bit.  It only gives me that familiar sinking feeling.  I didn’t need that, and neither do you.

• Limit your responses – There’s a school of thought that recommends that you limit your responses to no more than five sentences.  While I’m not a big fan of arbitrary rules or guidelines, I do think that most of us could be more concise and use less words in our email correspondence.  It also saves us precious time.

Don’t let your email run your life.  You can get your inbox down to zero, and you’ll experience less stress

In my last post, I referred several times to my ‘to-do manager.’  This is the tool I use to keep track of ALL my tasks.  This could be as low-tech as a pad of paper, but most people depend upon some type of software or web service.  I have tried many different  tools and have found one that meets all my to-do needs.  I’ll say up front that it has the stupidest name I’ve ever heard.  It was almost bad enough to keep me from giving it a try.  I use a web service called, “Toodledo.”  I picked this product for several reasons:

1. Flexibility - The vast majority of products, both paper and technology based, are designed around the organizational beliefs, practices and preferences of the product designer.  This is great if you agree with that designer, but I often found solutions either over or under engineered.  How each person manages their to-do’s is a very personal thing, so flexibility is very important, at least to me.  Toodledo provides a robust set of features with maximum customization.  You can configure it to work the way you do.  I have a folder set up for each key initiative (or project) in my world, and then tasks are listed within folder.  As my needs change, the system is easily tweaked to meet them.  Some times I want to view my tasks in due date order.  Other times I want to see them listed by folder.  Toodledo provides complete control over what you see and how the product will work.
2. Web-Based – I prefer web-based services over having to buy, download and maintain software on my laptop.  The Toodledo service is well-maintained and all that is transparent to me.  Yes, it’s true that I can’t get to it if I don’t have an internet connection, but that is rarely a reality for me.  Of course, it’s password protected to provide the necessary security.  You also don’t have to worry about backing up your data.  They do it for you.
3. Price – The web service is free to use (www.toodledo.com).  You can upgrade to a premium version if you want advanced features, but I’ve not found that to be necessary.  The free version is full-bodied (rather than lite).
4. Portable – There is a sweet Toodledo app for the iPhone that syncs up nicely with the web service.  It’ll cost you $2.99, but it is well worth it.  The most heavily used online features are available within the app.

If you’re looking for a tool to help you manage all the tasks in your life, give it a try.

I’ll wrap up this series of posts next time by talking about managing the never-ending avalanche of email.

One of the most valuable things I do each week is my Weekly Review.  This is one of the best takeaways from “Getting Things Done” by David Allen, which I covered last time.  It is such a simple idea, yet so powerful.  The big idea is to set aside some time each week to get my head empty once again.  If you remember from my last post, having things that we know we need to do bouncing around inside our head is the thing that increases stress and decreases productivity.  So clearing my head once a week of all those to-do’s and getting myself organized helps me in a multitude of ways.

While there are a lot of different ways to approach a Weekly Review, here’s what I do each week:

1. Purge my email inbox – I empty my inbox (I’m going to cover email management in a separate post later this week), and make sure that I capture all to-do’s into my to-do manager.
2. Purge my @action folder – This is the email folder where I’ve stored all my emails that needed additional action.  I process each one in turn, identifying additional to-do’s and entering them into my to-do manager.
3. Purge my paper inbox – This contains any paper correspondence, plus any papers that I’ve accumulated throughout the week that identify things that I didn’t want to forget.  Sometimes they’re things that need to be filed, other times there are things that I want to capture.  For instance, there might be a note I wrote myself to pick up a book I heard about that someone had read that was transformational.  Any to-do’s get added to my to-do manager.
4. Review my calendar – I look at my calendar over the next three weeks to see if any of my meetings require special preparation, the kind I can’t do 24 hours before the meeting.  For instance, if I have a meeting with senior leadership to discuss a proposal, I have to prepare that proposal.  I capture all to-do’s into my to-do’s manager.
5. Evaluate previous week’s progress – I look at every major project on my Personal Ministry Plan, plus initiatives I’m working on at home.  I celebrate the progress and thank God for His favor.
6. Plan the upcoming week’s objectives -  Again, looking at all the major initiatives at both work and home, I ask God to show me what He wants me to accomplish in the upcoming week.  I do this project by project.  It is important to maintain momentum, even if progress is sometimes slower than I would like.  During this step, it’s also important to look at how much discretionary time I have in the upcoming week to work on these objectives.
7. Adjust due dates of the to-do’s – I modify the due dates in my to-do manager to align with the upcoming week’s objectives.  I then look at all to-do’s in due date order for a sanity check, to see if it’s reasonable to expect that I can get all of that accomplished.  I adjust the dates if need be.

Once I’ve done this, my head is empty and I feel organized to meet the week.  I know this looks like a daunting process, but it only takes me about 60 – 90 minutes.  This investment of time pays remarkable dividends in peace and productivity.  I simply cannot go without doing my Weekly Review. It’s that powerful.

Next post is on the to-do manager, which is a vital component of the strategy to remain organized.

One of the most impacting things I’ve done to help manage the insane demands on my time, energy and attention is to read a book that was recommended by a friend.  I’m not into endorsing a lot of products, but this book changed the way I approach my life.  The name of the book is ‘Getting Things Done – The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” by David Allen.  Before I purchased it, I did a little research and found that it had an almost cult-like following.  People who had read the book made all sorts of unbelievable claims about what it had done for them.  I was intrigued enough to purchase and read the book.

Let me just say that I was not disappointed.  While I have yet to achieve “stress-free productivity,” I was impressed by the author’s understanding of how I think.  Within the first 50 pages, he demonstrated that he understood that all of these reminders bouncing around my head at the most inopportune times was both useless and stress-producing.  This is not your typical ’system’ approach to time management.  I used the Day-Timer system back in the day, and it was good for tracking and prioritizing my schedule, but that was then and this is now.  (A Day-Timer calendar page couldn’t even fit all the tasks that are part of a typical day at this point in my life.)  Getting Things Done (GTD) first talks about what causes stress and points out how those same things limit our productivity.  So many times I found myself saying, “Oh, that’s totally me!”

But the book doesn’t stop at presenting theory.  It moves quickly into concrete steps that we can take to set ourselves up for greater productivity with less stress.  Chapter 4 is called, “Getting Started:  Setting Up the Time, Space and Tools,” and it tells you how to do that.  The chapters that follow continue to lay out both the principles and action steps to better personal organization.  If you’re one of those people who like to customize everything to your own taste, you can modify the approach as you wish.

I read this book about three years ago and I can’t believe how much it has helped.  I am still employing most of the key takeaways, and they continue to help both relieve some of my stress and help me be more productive.

If you’re a busy person who has a ton of responsibilities at work and at home, then I strongly recommend that you give it a read.

Next time I’ll be discussing how I use one of the major concepts in the book – the weekly review.

It seems as though we’re all being asked and expected to do more and more.  This is as true at home as it is at work.  Just when we can’t imagine things getting any more busy, they get more busy.  Not just a little, but a lot.  It’s nuts.  And at the same time this is happening, we seem to have less resources to meet the demands.  We have less margin in regards to time, energy, money and even relational capacity.

It wasn’t meant to be this way.  When Jesus said that he came so that we have life and live it to the full, I don’t think this was the kind of abundance He meant.  I don’t think Jesus spread His arms and died on a Roman cross so that we could have the abundance of stress that most of us experience daily.  Sometimes I’ll ask myself if others around me would want my life?  When the first thing people say when they see me is, “I know how busy you are…” I know that I’m sending a message that I don’t want to send – the message that I’m too busy to enjoy my life.

At the same time, we have to remember that, as Christians, we’re engaged in the battle that wages between this world and God’s Kingdom.  It isn’t all about our comfort.  We’re going to be inconvenienced and stretched and sometimes even wounded.

How do we reconcile these two positions?  I’m not sure there’s a perfect answer, but I think God wants us to be fully committed to what He wants us to do.  Far too often we’re fully committed to what we want to do, often even thinking that we’re doing what He would want us to.  I believe with all my heart that God will not ask us to blow up our life in order to do His will – His good and perfect will.  If we’re finding ourselves constantly stressed out, we have to ask ourselves if that is God’s plan.  Is it possible that God’s intention is to have us teetering on the brink of burnout a lot of the time?  I have a hard time reconciling that with the God I know.

Anyway, I don’t have all the answers.  I’m not even sure I have any answers.  But there are a few things that I’m finding to be really valuable in helping me to manage all the things – things that I believe God has put on my plate.  Over the next several days, I’m going to be sharing those things and explaining how they work to make my life a bit more manageable.

I’d love this to become a dialog and a sharing of ideas that can bless a lot of folks, so please comment back throughout the week with what is working for you.