Let’s face it, we’ve engineered our professional lives to revolve around email as the central communication tool. I receive upwards of 300+ emails every single weekday. Far less on the weekends, nevertheless I wake up to a lot of email to process; and, it keeps on coming all day.

It doesn’t have to be this way, and I’ve written down a few thoughts as well as my theory on processing email that works for me. As a collection point for incoming files, communications from team members, clients, friends and relatives it’s hard to beat the email inbox. To limit the number of places where incoming messages collect, I use YouMail to transcribe incoming cell phone messages and send them to me by email - sometimes the translations are hilarious, but I can always get the gist of the message. Proof’s office telephone system similarly sends an .mp3 file of voice mail messages left, so I receive those by email as well.

Having too many collection points for notes, to-dos, things you need to read, watch or listen to is a fast way to lose control of your day and miss handling important items.  Think about the number of places in your life that are collection points from your desk to your car and home. I did an exercise once where I carried a note pad for a week just to write down where I put things I need to review or handle in some fashion. I was astonished to find out it was 17 different places ranging from three places in my car, a half-dozen spots in my home and the rest around my office.

I do my best to keep my collection points to six places:

• Laptop
• Smartphone
• One GIANT inbox
• Notepad
• Laptop case that I dump into the giant inbox to process.

I have a tablet, but I totally admit I just use it for books, and to display mobile-responsive design we’re working on to clients - in my life, it’s pretty much an overpriced e-reader that’s useful for presentations as well.

Before you can even think of processing your email, you must use your email client to set some rules so that much of that processing is done automatically for you. I’m subscribed to many email newsletters. Most are part of our culture of constant learning here at Proof, but quite a few are about books, movies, entertainment, art, sports and just plain goofy, fun topics I’m interested in. Those are all routed into sub-folders and I schedule time each week to skim through them, based on the all-important subject line for each email newsletter. If you didn’t capture me with the subject line, i’m hitting the delete key. At Proof, we obsess over subject lines for the email marketing messages we produce and deploy for our clients. We know firsthand as well as understanding that study after study has shown a compelling subject line (not “Newsletter - July 2014”) is key to open rates on email marketing.

Besides your email client, the second most important tool in keeping your email manageable is the telephone. It’s incredibly easy to slip into a mode of communication with everyone by email. This includes email with multiple recipients - the dreaded group email. I’ve been involved in conversations with three or more people on important decisions to be made entirely by email. After everyone adds their say to the topic and three or more rounds of an email circulate to five people - that’s 15 or more emails coming in and often takes hours to arrive at a decision that way. You have to ask yourself if you’re serving your client’s best interests just processing the conversation that way. My advice is to just pick up the phone and take a minute to hash through the topic. You’ll save yourself and your client numerous emails to go through. We’re a personality driven company and email doesn’t let a lot of personality leak through unless you’re an emoticon junkie. Sometimes the best email strategy is to not use email - pick up your phone, or get in your car or on an airplane and talk with that client. He or she is helping you pay the bills, and there is no substitute for face time with a client that knows you to be a partner in their success.

Ok (finally!) on to the rules I apply to processing email I call Read It and Route It.

It should take a few seconds to decide what to do with an email message if you stick to a pattern day after day. Emails generally are actionable items to handle or for your information only.

In a split second I determine whether I can just delete the email. If that’s not an option, next thing to figure out is whether it’s FYI or actionable. If it’s an FYI only item, I read it and reply to the sender.

At the next level of decision-making I’m dealing with an actionable item - on these emails I apply a 5-15-30+ rule. I determine quickly if the item is something I can take are of in less than five minutes. If it is, I just handle it and reply to the sender. If it’s an item better handled by a different member of the Proof team and that person can handle it in five minutes or less, I forward the email to the right person, then reply to the sender.

If it’s a task that’s going to take longer than five minutes by me or by someone on the team, I use Outlook’s “Flag” function to highlight the item and move to the next email to process. Every item of this duration or longer is logged as a task inside our Project Management System, ProWorkFlow - as I go through my email not routed to automatically to a “look at it later” folder.

Now, if something is going to take a while and it isn’t something better handled by someone else on the team I flag it and add the time I need to my Calendar. Our client deserves my undivided attention when working on their behalf, so I make an appointment with myself or a group meeting to discuss and handle the item.

For me, processing new email is just rinse and repeat of this decision-tree. Because of the nature of the way email is used to communicate everything…at the end of this process easily 90% of the email to be processed is dealt with quickly and gone. I spend easily 3 hours a day processing email beginning early in the morning and one of the last things I do at night, just on the first pass through. Without a way of thinking about and organizing all of this collected information and action items my day and night would be consumed just getting to the bottom of my email inbox.

The second pass with email is taking a look at the flagged items. In between the ones that will take a bit longer than five minutes most likely or items that will take around 15 minutes, I assume I can handle 8 to 10 of those items an hour, so I block out enough time to handle those shorter tasks in one or two chunks of time in the day. Finally, I block out time during the week to read the email newsletters routed into sub-folders by type and time over the weekend at night to read the non-work content that’s come in to refresh and reboot my brain

Personal relationships have been the key to Proof’s success, it’s vital to tame the email monster so there’s time to foster and enjoy those relationships. We’re honored to work very closely with our clients and many have become personal friends over the years. This system has worked so well for me that I’ve taken to emailing myself the notes from my paper notepad I use during meetings and telephone calls for both FYI and action items. It’s there along with incoming email and phone calls. It’s a constant battle, but every communication related to our clients and partners deserves its due. And when all else fails, just pick up the dang phone ;).