Yesterday I learned some pretty nifty tips from email efficiency expert Mike Song (otherwise known as the Hamster).  Mike is out promoting his book, The Hamster Revolution, and was interviewed by coach and info-entrepreneur, Marcia Bench.

Not only is Mike all about email efficiency, he seems to be a very efficient guy.  He has a kind of "chop, chop, get it done" approach which made the teleseminar a good use of my time.

The advice for taking care of your email boils down to: batch it, drag it, stash it, or delete it.  (My words, not his.)

Batch it — Did you know that every time you are interrupted by an email it takes 64 seconds to get back into whatever you were doing prior.  This means that you will lose over a minute each time an email comes in and breaks your concentration — whether you are actually taking care of that email or just interrupted by "mail is here" bell or popup.  Mike recommends batching your email.  Reset your synchronization to occur every 30 minutes instead of 5 minutes.  Turn off the email.  Do not deal with each message as it comes in.  Discipline yourself to take a block of time to work on a larger batch of email at once.  As you get into the rhythm of triage it will take less time.  And you’ll only have one interruption instead of 40. 

Drag it — Most of us do not use most of the function in our email program.  In software like Outlook you can drag and drop your messages into all different places.  Drag your message into your calendar or task list to remind yourself to deal with it later.   Right click on a message to flag it for follow up (or set a rule to file it or even block the sender of that message.)  Another cool Outlook tip is to use the F12 key to send the open message directly into your "My Documents" folder.  Get it out of your email and into it’s appropriate storage right away! 

Which brings me to…

Stash it — Mike proposes a sleek, non-overlapping, system of folders for saving the email (and other documents) that you must keep:  COTA.  This stands for Clients, Output (as in your work output), Teams (the teams or groups you are part of) and Administrative.    This is his invention — of course, we are free to create out own.  But the point is to use a system that has no overlaps.  Think for a second about the limitations of a system based on file type  A folder called Spreadsheets could contain the department budget, my expense report, and the list of Christmas cards to be sent next year.  Can you see how it could become hard to know what to expect to find in that folder.  Reduce the ambiguity as much as possible and only save what you need.

And certainly not least…

Delete it — Mike urges us to go against our primal instinct to hoard information.  When trying to determine whether to keep something, ask yourself, Is this information unique or can I Google it?  What is the value of this information on a scale of 1-10?  What is the life cycle of this information?  Then err on the side of deletion.  Mike’s mantra:  Save Less. Find More!

Mike was full of practical ideas and much more information than I have conveyed here.  If you are hungry for more tips and strategies for managing your email check out his site at: http://hamsterrevolution.com/.  He has a learning center on the site that includes tips and lots of statistics. (I love statistics!)

The book, The Hamster Revolution:  How to Manage Your Email Before it Manages You is also available on Amazon.