Hack 2: Decrease Your Response Time
Level Easy
Platform All
Cost Free
Responding to your email in a timely manner is one of the best things you can do for your career. But no one emerges from the womb with a natural talent for parrying a constant stream of new messages vying for your attention all day long. Email responsiveness is an acquired skill — the one that just may differentiate you from everyone else in the world who’s overwhelmed by an overloaded inbox.
Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, agrees. He said, “The truth is, you are building your reputation — your brand — one response at a time. People are shaping their view of you by how you respond to them. If you are slow, they assume you are incompetent and over your head. If you respond quickly, they assume you are competent and on top of your work. Their perception, whether you realize it or not, will determine how fast your career advances and how high you go. You can’t afford to be unresponsive. It is a career-killer.”6
Although it’s impossible to instantly respond to the dozens of new email messages you receive every day, you can increase your responsiveness rate without becoming a slave to your inbox. This hack provides strategies for responding to your email in a timely fashion without killing your entire workday.
Process Messages in Batches
Your inbox dictates the ebb and flow of your work if it interrupts you every time a new message arrives. Don’t let it.
The explosion of email communication and proliferation ...
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