2013 Weight Loss Program for Your Mailboxes

I know many January articles refer to weight loss as a Top 10 New Year’s Resolution.  Instead of de-cluttering your body I’m going to help you purge your electronic and paper mail which will in turn benefit your brain by de-cluttering your mind. Yes, that’s true. This will be a two-part series starting this week with email.

E-Mail Weight Loss Program

• Assign A Time – Decide in advance when you are going to read your emails daily. Set up a routine for yourself with a beginning and ending timeframe allowing you to process your inbox completely. You only want to open your email when you are prepared to respond and deal with the requests you receive.
• DAF – You have three choices to make with an email after you know what it is:
  • Delete (please get off lists by unsubscribing too)
  • Act
  • File for Future Follow Up

If you can answer the email within two minutes than do so immediately rather than putting it off until later. If something is going to take longer than three minutes either pick up the phone to complete the action or decide when you are going to get to this and make a note in your planner to do so. Then move the email into an appropriate folder.

• Folder Holder – Most of our emails will fall into certain categories based on our lifestyle. Instead of having one big toy chest of a mailbox, create folders for the categories of your typical mail such as:

1. School
2. Sports
3. Church
4. Casual Reading/Newsletters
5. Names of Loved Ones

• No Picking Cherries – By following th above tips, you shouldn’t be cherry picking through your email opening only the ones you want to or are easiest to do.
• Silence is Golden – Turn off email
  notifications. The noise or the visual will distract you from what you are
  doing and then you’ll have to re-focus yourself again to the task you were
  doing.

If you would like more organizing information, please go to www.POSSEpartnersllc.com or call Jean Marie Herron at 201-406-9643.