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

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STOP THE FLOOD

USE MEETING MANAGERSavoid 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• Spam@utmb.edu

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

RULESStay 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