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Email overload? PIFEM!

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Do you get more email each day than you can handle?  Are you up until midnight doing email?  Do you miss important emails?

I receive literally hundreds of emails every day, most of which need some sort of action, and not being able to process them effectively means I'm not doing my job effectively.

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Go from this......

Angus Click to IM Angus has just blogged about a new email management system that we (Ian Palangio, Angus and myself) have been developing recently.

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....to this.

We took best practices of email management (e.g. the 4 D's Email Management) and time management (e.g. prioritisation), and integrated it with the technology of Outlook 2007 and Exchange.

What we came up with is the Pay It Forward Email Management (PIFEM) system.

The Pay It Forward idea is from the Kevin Spacey movie Pay it Forward there is one key premise to this course:

IF YOU DECIDE TO TRY THE APPROACH OUTLINED, AND YOU ACTUALLY FIND IT USEFUL, YOU HAVE TO PAY IT FORWARD AND TELL 3 OR MORE OTHER PEOPLE ABOUT IT AND GET THOSE PEOPLE TO CONSIDER TRYING THE APPROACH. IF THIS INFORMATION IS TRULY USEFUL, THE CONCEPT WILL SPREAD. IF THIS INFORMATION IS NOT TRULY USEFUL, THE CONCEPT WILL DIE A NATURAL DEATH.

To quote Angus:

I'm not an email slacker, every email I get I action (and no - that doesn't mean delete).

When I triage my email I choose if I do it today, tomorrow, next week.

I then do today's activities and that all I need to do.

Pay it forward because once you implement it, you must pay it forward by helping others implement this.

This is life / job changing email management

Ian documented the process and the online package is available in his SkyDrive ( if you don't have OneNote you can download a free trial ).

Click the image below to download from SkyDrive:

 

OneNote was used as this is a multi-dimensional document and was developed collaboratively within Microsoft.

Let us know your feedback!

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Angus Kidman covered @ LifeHacker and Sarah Perez @ Channel10 – this will change your life. So much that

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Well, for my first blog post I'd better cover PIFEM - which is an email management system that Angus

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    I recently posted on a new email management system called Pay It Forward Email Management (PIFEM). The

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Hi Brendon, Thanks for the feedback!  Yes it is shame that Outlook only has the ability to view Emails or Tasks in a single folder, not both. This is something I will follow-up with my peers - to see if they have any suggestions on how we could expose today's Tasks in the same view. Cheers :)

  • Anonymous
    January 06, 2008
    I have been using the same style of email management with the new Outlook 2007 features for some months now and find the process very effective. The only problem I come across is when I have a task to do that is not in my email, I end up having to email myself to flag it for follow up or else it does not get done.

  • Anonymous
    June 05, 2009
    This is a great system which is working well for me personally. One of our CEOs was interested in adopting it with his PA. Unfortunately, I can't find a way of exposing his search folders to her outlook profile (running Outlook 2007 and Exchange 2007) - do you know if this is possible?

  • Anonymous
    July 06, 2010
    I used to be overwhelmed by email overload a few years ago. But not any more. I've found a very effective email management solution called Taroby www.taroby.com which helps me manage all my emails and messages with ease.