This is sooooo me: "At some point, she snapped. “I’m not a secretary,” she declared. “I’m not required to jump to respond to everything that crosses my path.”" I cannot - CANNOT - usually stand to leave something in my inbox to respond to "later". And I'm a huge procrastinator, so it's not like I'm anal about getting things done right away. It's just with responses. I HATE for someone to not get a response from me.
I can't do that either - I usually click on an e-mail as it pops up in the corner. I've noticed since we moved here that a lot of people don't respond right away to e-mails. If I get an e-mail from someone asking for something, and it will take me a while to get the answer, I respond immediately and tell them that. Simply to acknowledge I got the e-mail. People around here just don't do that, and it drives me insane.
I do that too! I send out emails throughout the day that say "I'm going to need to call and get an answer for you, I'll write back when I hear something." And more than a couple of times one of my contractors has said to me "You know, it's okay to just write back once you HAVE the answer" But don't you want to know that I'm working on it?!?
Tell him that would make your left eye twitch uncontrollably and you'd hum the star spangled banner until you responded
See I'm such a flake sometimes. Sadly. Embarrassingly. So I will often read an email with the intention of responding as soon as I can sit for a few moments and then I'm all "ooh look at this hat on Etsy" and "oooh I meant to look up that roast recipe for tonight" and then I'm all "bugga let's not use that marker on the couch" and then I scrap and totally lose sight of any intentions for being a responsible keep-in-toucher. That's my confession. eta: needless to say, time management is one of the things I am not terribly good at and really need to improve.
That's totally me Sara. It's horrible. Currently I have 189 messages in my In Box. I really am such a bad friend. But then again, I don't expect people to respond right away either.
Yes thats me too Sara LOL I will read an email and not have time to respond or i read it on my iphone as im in the checkout and i think to myself i will respond when i get home or later or whatever and a couple days later i will realize i forgot and i feel bad. But they aren't work emails as i am a sahm so its not really important stuff LOL
I think I would hate it too Julie if the new ones weren't in bold and at the bottom. If I am looking for a particular e-mail, I will sort alpha by name. It helps tremendously. But now I'm feeling like an enabler teaching you my bad tricks. You just keep on answering those e-mails right away because I'm pretty sure that is the way most people prefer.
I have tons of e-mails for replying in my inbox. I hate saying this, but it is true. I know that if I don't reply immediately, I will never reply although I would like to change this. I don't wait for replies immediately. I know who I am sending e-mails and their time for replying me. My time is wasted most checking e-mails. That is too bad!
lol thats why i love gmail you can just search for anything and all the emails that have that word in them pop up. I am so disorganized i have 380 emails i need to go through and most of them i could probably delete. I dont know why i dont delete them right away, I really should LOL
i think i handle the email and phone messages pretty well. that is...when i'm on task.. i could totally handle only checking emails once or twice a day. and my phone message service already has "i will get back to you in the next 24 hours" thing on it. my weak point is that i'm a HUMUNGOUS procrastinator. like right now i need to be blow drying my hair and leaving the house to take care of errands. right. like i'm going to get right on that.
I'm starting to twitch, too. My mom is one of those people who opens up her inbox and it'll say something like "Inbox (2354)" and I start to hyperventilate. Whenever I have to fix something on her Blackberry I almost break out in hives, because I delete all my emails out of my Blackberry inbox as I read them and take care of them. I am known to pull over on the side of the road and answer an email on my Blackberry. I have a sickness.
Some days I don't even open up my regular email account because it always means more work for me. But my scrapbooking email is always open; I 'd hate to miss out on something important.
The article was awesome Lauren, thanks for sharing. I needed it. I'm thinking of ways to implement that fixed schedule, especially for my post-work time after 5:30pm.