Are You Spending Too Much Time Replying to E-mails?

Q: I’m getting absolutely buried in the incoming e-mails. It takes me over an hour every day just to go through them and send out meaningful replies. What can I do to save time  while still being helpful to my contacts?

A: Most time consuming e-mail messages are the ones with questions in them. Coming up with a good answer and putting it together into a spell-checked and formatted e-mail takes time. But in many cases you can save lots of time if you only use social bookmarking sites. Here’s how:

1. As you add interesting articles, posts, pages to your favorite bookmarking site make sure to tag them with descriptive tags.
2. When you get an e-mail with a question about let’s say Twitter, simply search for Twitter tags (mine include, for example twitteruse, tweeps, twittertools, twitter).
3. Then copy and paste the links to your bookmarks in your e-mail with a short personal note.

Another tool I use is Google Reader. As I review new items (typically – blog posts), I tag the good ones. From there, I have a few options. One is to Share your Reader (or a small part of it) with your contacts. Another option is to e-mail a post or an article directly from Reader to your contact, including any personal notes.

Technorati Tags: social bookmarking, time management, RSS

Related posts:

1. 4 Steps to Reclaiming Control of Your Email
2. Best for Last – September 25, 2009