Microsoft’s Findings Of Our Email Habits
The Microsoft study was presented on Calcalist Tech. The report shows that emails take up 28 percent of employees’ time, including reading and replying to them.
It’s worth noting that this already-considerable chunk of time doesn’t include any other social media programs, such as Teams and Slack. This means we spend a considerable chunk of work time on correspondence.
Dr. Tomer Simon, the National Technology Officer at Microsoft Israel, said this on the matter:
A Necessary Evil for Employees?
Simon explains that while emails are a huge time drain for employees, the answer is not as simple as shutting down the company inboxes. While social media has taken off in the last decade for consumer-business interaction, there’s still the case of sending confidential information via email.
As such, the way forward is to handle your emails better. Simon says that putting off emails is not the answer, as that lets the problem pile up. Instead, he recommends performing what’s called an “email triage,” which sacrifices the less-important emails to answer urgent inquiries.
Such a technique uses aggressive labeling and sorting to organize and manage your inbox. By doing this, you know which emails they can ditch and which you need to respond to as soon as it lands in your inbox.
Don’t Let Your Emails Become Your E-Jail
Microsoft has uncovered how emails can cripple our productivity, but all is not lost. By using email triage and sacrificing less-important emails to satisfy the vital ones, you can take control of your bulging inbox and reclaim the hours in your day.
If your inbox needs more of a triple bypass than a triage, don’t worry. There is a way to trim a 20,000-wide inbox to shape in just 30 seconds.
Image Credit: Marie Maerz / Shutterstock.com
