Email overload? PIFEM!
Do you get more email each day than you can handle? Are you up until midnight doing email? Do you miss important emails?
I receive literally hundreds of emails every day, most of which need some sort of action, and not being able to process them effectively means I'm not doing my job effectively.
Go from this......
Angus 
has just blogged about a new email management system that we (Ian Palangio, Angus and myself) have been developing recently.
....to this.
We took best practices of email management (e.g. the 4 D's Email Management) and time management (e.g. prioritisation), and integrated it with the technology of Outlook 2007 and Exchange.
What we came up with is the Pay It Forward Email Management (PIFEM) system.
The Pay It Forward idea is from the Kevin Spacey movie Pay it Forward there is one key premise to this course:
IF YOU DECIDE TO TRY THE APPROACH OUTLINED, AND YOU ACTUALLY FIND IT USEFUL, YOU HAVE TO PAY IT FORWARD AND TELL 3 OR MORE OTHER PEOPLE ABOUT IT AND GET THOSE PEOPLE TO CONSIDER TRYING THE APPROACH. IF THIS INFORMATION IS TRULY USEFUL, THE CONCEPT WILL SPREAD. IF THIS INFORMATION IS NOT TRULY USEFUL, THE CONCEPT WILL DIE A NATURAL DEATH.
To quote Angus:
I'm not an email slacker, every email I get I action (and no - that doesn't mean delete).
When I triage my email I choose if I do it today, tomorrow, next week.
I then do today's activities and that all I need to do.
Pay it forward because once you implement it, you must pay it forward by helping others implement this.
This is life / job changing email management
Ian documented the process and the online package is available in his SkyDrive (if you don't have OneNote you can download a free trial).
Click the image below to download from SkyDrive:
OneNote was used as this is a multi-dimensional document and was developed collaboratively within Microsoft.
Let us know your feedback!
