Thursday, May 2, 2013

Back from Morocco

I am just back from a week in Morocco.  Beautiful country.  A mix of modern with ancient. 

I hurt my knee running the first day but did manage a 5 mile hike in the Atlas Mountains.  But then did no workouts.  So I feel bloated (there was lots of food of course).  

But as with all travel, I always feel behind when I return.  So I use an email management technique to ease my email stress.  It is based on the old time management principle - touch each piece of paper only once. 

What I do is allocate 2 minutes maximum per email (most take less than a minute).  If I can complete it in less than 2 minutes, I deal with it completely.  It requires focus on just one at a time.  Working with a full email in box is a bit like working at a messy desk - everything is screaming "do me, do me". 

In busy times, I also sometimes spend 10 minutes doing emergency scanning.  For this, I allow only 5 seconds per email.  This reduces stress because I know nothing is burning.

By the time I spend even half a day, I will have weeded the emails that take more than 2 minutes down to only about 40 emails - much less daunting than before I started.







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