It’s a good thing I didn’t make a New Year resolution to write a blog each week. Last year it was my intention to have a weekly blog but I didn’t actually make it a resolution on 1 January 2012. At the rate I’m going it’s going to be one a month. However think I can do better than that now I’ve got started again.
The biggest thing to hit me so far this year is the problems people have with their in-box. It was right up there with losing weight and getting fit as a NY resolution.
Before we had email it used to be the in-tray that caused people grief, especially on a Friday afternoon when the tray had got higher and higher during the week and there’d be no time to move into it.
It became a Friday afternoon job to sort the in-tray and move stuff on to other people, like the journals that were circulated around the office. You’d have a quick flick through to see if there was anything interesting. If there was, you’d send it on without crossing your name off the circulation list so it would come back to you another time when you hoped you’d have time to read it (that seldom happened!). If there was nothing that took your eye – you’d cross your name off the list and send it on its way to someone else’s in-tray, where it would sit for another week or two in someone else’s in-tray.
It’s worth using the same sort of technique with your email inbox. Spend a few minutes every Friday afternoon going through your emails. You’ll be amazed how many you can delete in 5 or 10 minutes even. Then the rest will look more manageable – until next week at least!