Dealing With Holiday Emails
I hope you’re ready for a fun and relaxing festive period, I know I am! With the probability of emails building up over the holidays and coming back off a break to see 10s, if not hundreds of emails in your inbox can be very disconcerting – I mean, don’t other people take time off too? Apparently not! So what can we do about this?
I hope you’re ready for a fun and relaxing festive period, I know I am!
The problem is that when we take time off emails have a tendency to pile up – last year I had people emailing me on Christmas day for goodness sake!
With the probability of emails building up over the holidays and coming back off a break to see 10s, if not hundreds of emails in your inbox can be very disconcerting – I mean, don’t other people take time off too? Apparently not!
When you fire up your computer after a well earned break to see the unread email account at a ridiculous level it can be almost panic inducing and you start asking questions like:
How will I get through them all and still get on with work?
How will I know if they’re important or just for information?
How do I separate newsletters or rubbish from “real” emails?
I’ve written before on how to manage emails during time off but most of the suggestions in this article require some pre-planning. So what can you do if you’ve come back to a full inbox and don’t know where to start?
Don’t worry we’ve got you covered!
Decide On A Plan
If you’re CC’d into an email, it’s probably for information and not for your direct attention. Is there an office email address that just sends out notices that don’t need to be responded to?
Is there someone who just sends jokes or information about the fact no one has cleaned the mugs in the office kitchen again?
There will always be certain accounts or emails that will not require action immediately so think about those and how you’re going to handle them.
This will help in the next step. For example emails from your immediate boss or a major client you’ll probably want to deal with straight away. Notes about general office news might be lower down on the list and those jokes? Well you probably don’t need to read them at all.
Coming up with a hierarchy will help in the next step.
Categorize And Make Folders For Your Emails
Before you even start reading your emails you want to make sure you’re only getting to look at the most important ones first.
I’ve written previously about how you can use filters to tag/label emails and then use that to file emails to get them out of your inbox.
This allows you to prioritise your inbox – I know some people (mainly those over the age of 45, no shade just an observation with a lot of data) also use a work email address as their personal email as well and this is never a good idea. It’s changing slowly thanks to phones now allowing “work” and “personal” profiles but you will still need a way to separate the important work emails from the general (personal) or unimportant work emails.
Look through your emails and create some folders for them such as “Important”, “Client A”, “Client B”, Copied In On”, “Personal”, “Mailing List”, “Annoying Joker From Accounts” etc.
You can then use filters to automate sorting these emails.
Filter, Flag & File
Once you’ve determined what the most important emails will be and have set up your folders you can set up some rules/filters or labels (the term is dependant on your email client).
You can tell a filter/rule/label to look at emails in your inbox (and future incoming emails), set the criteria such as a “From” address, whether you’re CC’d, subject line, email content and more to set up a filter/rule/label that will sort through your emails to get them out of your inbox and into the folders you set up that allow you to pick what are the most important emails to look at.
Timebox Your Email Use
When you’ve set up your folders and then filtered your emails, you may still find it a bit daunting to go through a massive chunk of emails all in one go.
With that in mind, set up some time to look at the most important emails first but give yourself a set amount of time to work through them. This is known as Time Boxing.
If you try and get through them all in one go, you’ll find yourself being pulled in different directions, maybe on different projects with different needs.
Look through your emails, make a note of any “to do” tasks from emails and send a quick simple reply saying you have their email, you’re working through emails received over the holiday and will get back to them as soon as you can. This will hopefully stop people chasing up and asking if you got their initial email – which is a SUPER annoying thing to do, so don’t be that person.
Download a time blocking template here.
You can also use the Two Minute Rule so that if it’s going to take 2 minutes or less just do it, reply and get it out of the way.
Tip: Use our “Gamify Your Day” planner to note your most important down to easiest tasks (download password PLAN2PLAN). We’ll be working on more to-do lists so stay subscribed to know when we release it.
Don’t Be Afraid To Delete
If you come across and email that offers you no value, isn’t relevant, doesn’t require a response or doesn’t contain information you’ll need in the future… bin it.
Yup! Don’t be afraid to delete irrelevant emails. I know we need to pull up emails every now and again (I love pulling stuff out from 2018 when people think I’ve forgotten) but you don’t need to save that joke or info about a fire drill do you?
Be ruthless.
You Don’t HAVE To Reply
It’s a common misconception that you need to respond to every email – even just to say “thanks” or “received”.
I’d argue that if it doesn’t require an actual action on your part then there is no point in the reply. It just takes up your time in writing the reply and clogs up the recipients inbox.
If you do have to send a reply, be mindful of the emails that you send. Try to be concise and to the point, and avoid sending emails that can wait until later.
Final Thoughts
Coming back from a holiday to an over-running inbox can be daunting – almost to the point where we think we need to check our email over the holiday so it’s more manageable on our return to work.
That doesn’t have to be the case though – follow the steps above and you’ll get most of your emails tamed and managed within hours of getting back to the office and if you have any questions or need advice, just hit “reply” and I’ll try to help the best I can.
Do you have any advice on dealing with emails after a break? Let us know in the comments below.
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