Loud Thinking

Identify Discrete Tasks to Get Through Your Email Faster

It can be tricky to distinguish between processing your email and doing your work. You’re “just checking your email,” and the next thing you know, you’re deep in an Excel file, calculating the latest budget figures so that you can reply to a message — while new messages pile up. The more you can separate the job of reading and replying to email from the tasks that are sometimes embedded in your correspondence, the faster you’ll be able to get through your inbox and actually get on to those tasks. A good rule: stay within your email program during email time. Anything that requires you to open a browser or Word document, pick up the phone, or walk over to a colleague’s desk is by definition a discrete task.

Adapted by HBR from “Work Smarter, Rule Your Email” by Alexandra Samuel.