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Taming the e-Mail Tiger
pedi.edtech, Faculty Development ProgramVirginia Niebuhr, Patricia Beach, Mark Wolffarth, Mary Jo Urbani
(other team members not present: Anne Rudnicki, Schelli Gondesen
UTMB Department of Pediatrics
supported by a grant from:
US Dept. Health & Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Bureau of Health Professions
INTRODUCTIONS
IDENTIFY THE PROBLEMS
“Yikes, how can this be happening”
a paired-participant activity
REFLECTIONS ON “WHY?”
EMAIL HEALTH DISORDERS
• Impulsivity Disorder• Inattention Disorder (aka No-Compulsion Disorder)• Narcissism• Avoidance Syndromes
– avoiding real work– avoiding thinking – make someone else do the thinking– avoiding personal interaction– avoiding time to process
• Head/Neck/Wrist Disorders
THREE STATIONS
15-min each (facilitators rotate)
Managing the Workflow
PERSONAL EMAIL DECISIONS
• Check often or once-daily? – Avoid being seduced into complex or interesting tasks outside
your plans for the day!– Should I even peek?– Expectations for response time: not the same as phone or text
• Top down or bottom up? • How many e-mail accounts?
– Work– Personal correspondence– Personal ordering/registrations
• Batched email reading time vs. as-they-arrive
TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION ON EVERY E-MAIL
– Quick reply or action– To Do– Delete– Save/File– Mark as Unread (CTRL-U)
IMPLICATIONS OF SMART PHONE EMAIL VIEWING
– Efficient use of down-time– Short answer only– Can’t delete– Watch out for auto-correct– Be courteous
• Avoid disengaging• Sounds generated can be annoying to others
ART OF THE CC: WHO NEEDS TO GET OR NOT GET THIS MAIL
– Reply vs Reply to all
– Review all individuals already
on the string
– Blind cc to self, others?
– Be careful of long email strings
SAVE CLICKS Read without opening
Two methods• Reading Pane• Auto Preview
READING PANE
On the View menu, click Reading Pane
(choose Below or Right)
AUTO PREVIEW
•Auto PreviewOn the View menu, click Auto Preview to see the first three lines of each message
STOP THE FLOODDecrease the Input
Small group brainstorm
STOP THE FLOODOut Of Office
STOP THE FLOODDelegates
STOP THE FLOOD
Never look at it? UNSUBSCRIBE
This advertisement is sent to [email protected] from GTC, 635 W. Foothill Blvd, Monrovia, CA 91016. If you prefer not to receive further messages from this sender, please forward this email to [email protected] or use the following link to unsubscribe http://gtcbio.com/[email protected]
STOP THE FLOOD
USE MEETING MANAGERS
avoid multiple emails to schedule a meeting– Outlook “New Meeting”
• Appointment• Scheduling assistant• Lync invitations
– www.Doodle.com
STOP THE FLOOD
STOP THE FLOOD
STOP THE FLOOD
STOP THE FLOOD
DEAL WITH SPAM– Block sender
Highlight email right-click Junk Email Block sender
– Forward to institution spam manager• [email protected]
STOP THE FLOOD
• Unsubscribe
• Meeting managers
• Deal with SPAM
• Negotiate with senders– e.g. do you want this person to send a ‘thanks” each time to let
you know email was received, or can you negotiate to skip this?
• Avoid needless cc’s
• Take care with REPLY vs. REPLY ALL
Using Email Features to Help with Task Management
Making better use of Outlook for work efficiency and task
management
FOLDERS• physical world file cabinet.
• virtual world use metadata and search.
• few folders all of your stuff.
• QUICK VIDEO (3 minutes)
• Microsoft’s Best Practices :• An Inbox • A reference folder, under the Inbox.• A personal folder • A set of folders for Contact Group
messages. • A set of folders for RSS feeds
RULES
Stay on the Right Track• de-emphasizing the fluff and • highlighting the important stuff
Move messages to folders criteria you set.
Filter messages before they arrive to Inbox MUST READ ONLY
QUICK VIDEO (3 minutes)S
RULESMicrosoft’s Best Practices :•To: Me Inbox•Meeting Requests Inbox. •Defer Sent Items by one minute or longer•Contact Group to a Contact Group folder.
Best Practices from Microsoft
USING CATEGORIES
• Outlook Categories virtually assign items to many different places. – Project or People, – Subjects or Topics and – Location or Activities.
• Categorize items that must be done and can’t roll over to another day.
• The big advantages is:You can apply multiple categories to a single
item — as opposed to filing, where items can live in only one folder at a time.
• QUICK VIDEO (about 3 minutes)
COLOR CODING CATEGORIES
• What’s the best way to choose colors?– Make it visually easy to see what
needs to be done or what has been done
• Over time, you will be able to look at your task list and determine just by color whether the task is presently actionable.
SCHEDULE TIME FOR YOURSELF
Why schedule time for myself?– your free/busy information will be updated
– people will be less likely to schedule you for that time.
– this might be the only way you can get dedicated time to do your job.
– It also helps you to make a commitment to doing work —
– if you put it on your calendar, you should be committed to doing that work at that time.
– If someone schedules over your work time, make sure to reschedule your time.
Don't let time get away from you!
FLAGGING Flags flexible in a variety of ways:•If you don’t want to “do” a email task now, you can defer it with a flag. It automatically creates a task with custom flagged date.
Use the flags to mark tasks and emails as complete when appropriate.
Organizing/Saving/Deleting
Can I Find the email I need?
How best to save the email I might need later?
Strategies for deleting
SORTING
SEARCHING
InBox FOLDERS FOLDERS/SUBFOLDERS for CURRENT WORK:
Suggested InBox Folders
• 1To Do
– for clinic
– for course
• Project A
• Project B
• Travel notes
• Waiting for reply
PERSONAL STORAGE FOLDERS (.pst*)FOLDERS for SAVED WORK
ARCHIVING
Personal Folders
Archives
At UTMB, you needn't worry about archiving.
The server back-up systems are doing that for you.
EMAIL SIZE
THINK ABOUT SPACE•Do you really need to save this?•Pay attention to large files•Don’t save twice (In , Sent)
SIZE MATTERS
• pst files: a Personal Storage Table (.pst)• size of a .pst is not unlimited
.pst file size limitMS Outlook 2007 20GBMS Outlook 2010 50GB
If a PST is getting full, you can create new PSTs
At UTMB, the Personal Folders reside on your H:drive, and your H:drive also has a size limit. H:drive size limits are department specific.
Personal Folder does not mean "personal" as in "all about my children" or "photos from my vacation" Personal is not private, it just means storage. Think of this as the file cabinets in your office which allow you to get your 'work stuff off' your desk.
EMPTY THE TRASH
Automatically: empty every time you close Outlook
Other ways to find things
• CTRL-U (mark as unread)
• Careful Subject Lines
EMERGENCY PLAN
• Empty the trash• Delete the large files
– Sort on size– from INBOX, SENT,
DELETED
URGENT CARE PLAN
1. SCHEDULE 30-min’s ON YOUR CALENDAR2. CREATE two subfolders:
– TO DO– SAVE
3. NOTE the # items in the Box4. Start the timer5. SORT
– by FROM – decide whose can be deleted– or by DATE…do you want to delete any mail over X months?
6. DELETE the obvious7. MOVE “Actionable” items
TO DO (don’t do them, just move to a ToDo folder)
SAVE (“Need to save” )
8. NOTE the # items in the Box
end of rotations, return to large group
“I’m going to …”
Wrap-up: Lessons learned
www.utmb.edu/pediedtech/email/email.html
