Taming the e-Mail Tiger
pedi.edtech, Faculty Development Program
Virginia Niebuhr, Patricia Beach, Mark Wolffarth, Mary Jo Urbani
(other team members not present: Anne Rudnicki, Schelli Gondesen
UTMB Department of Pediatrics
supported by a grant from:
US Dept. Health & Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration,
Bureau of Health Professions
INTRODUCTIONS
Who are
we
Sign-in
cards
Who
are
you?
IDENTIFY THE PROBLEMS
“Yikes, how can this be happening”
a paired-participant activity
REFLECTIONS ON “WHY?”
EMAIL HEALTH DISORDERS
•
•
•
•
Impulsivity Disorder
Inattention Disorder (aka No-Compulsion Disorder)
Narcissism
Avoidance Syndromes
–
–
–
–
avoiding real work
avoiding thinking – make someone else do the thinking
avoiding personal interaction
avoiding time to process
• Head/Neck/Wrist Disorders
THREE STATIONS
15-min each (facilitators rotate)
Managing the
workflow
Using Email
Features to Help
with Task
Management
Organizing/
Saving/
Deleting
Managing the Workflow
PERSONAL EMAIL DECISIONS
•
Check often or once-daily?
–
–
–
•
•
Top down or bottom up?
How many e-mail accounts?
–
–
–
•
Avoid being seduced into complex or interesting tasks outside
your plans for the day!
Should I even peek?
Expectations for response time: not the same as phone or text
Work
Personal correspondence
Personal ordering/registrations
Batched email reading time vs. as-they-arrive
TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION ON EVERY E-MAIL
– Quick reply or action
– To Do
– Delete
– Save/File
– Mark as Unread (CTRL-U)
IMPLICATIONS OF SMART PHONE
EMAIL VIEWING
– Efficient use of down-time
– Short answer only
– Can’t delete
– Watch out for auto-correct
– Be courteous
• Avoid disengaging
• Sounds generated can be annoying to others
ART OF THE CC:
WHO NEEDS TO GET OR NOT GET THIS MAIL
– Reply vs Reply to all
– Review all individuals already
on the string
– Blind cc to self, others?
– Be careful of long email strings
SAVE CLICKS
Read without opening
Two methods
• Reading Pane
• Auto Preview
READING PANE
On the View menu,
click Reading Pane
(choose Below or Right)
AUTO PREVIEW
•Auto Preview
On the View menu, click Auto Preview to see
the first three lines of each message
STOP THE FLOOD
Decrease the Input
Small group
brainstorm
STOP THE FLOOD
Out Of Office
STOP THE FLOOD
Delegates
STOP THE FLOOD
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STOP THE FLOOD
USE MEETING MANAGERS
avoid multiple emails to schedule a meeting
– Outlook “New Meeting”
• Appointment
• Scheduling assistant
• Lync invitations
– www.Doodle.com
STOP THE FLOOD
STOP THE FLOOD
STOP THE FLOOD
STOP THE FLOOD
DEAL WITH SPAM
– Block sender
Highlight email  right-click 
Junk Email  Block sender
– Forward to institution spam manager
• Spam@utmb.edu
STOP THE FLOOD
•
•
•
•
Unsubscribe
Meeting managers
Deal with SPAM
Negotiate with senders
– e.g. do you want this person to send a ‘thanks” each time to let
you know email was received, or can you negotiate to skip this?
• Avoid needless cc’s
• Take care with REPLY vs. REPLY ALL
Using Email Features to Help
with Task Management
Making better use of Outlook for
work efficiency and task
management
FOLDERS
•
•
•
•
physical world  file cabinet.
virtual world  use metadata and search.
few folders all of your stuff.
QUICK VIDEO (3 minutes)
• Microsoft’s Best Practices :
•
•
•
•
An Inbox
A reference folder, under the Inbox.
A personal folder
A set of folders for Contact Group
messages.
• A set of folders for RSS feeds
RULES
Stay on the Right Track
• de-emphasizing the fluff and
• highlighting the important stuff
Move messages to folders 
criteria you set.
Filter messages before they arrive
to Inbox  MUST READ ONLY
QUICK VIDEO (3 minutes)
S
RULES
Microsoft’s Best Practices :
• To: Me  Inbox
• Meeting Requests  Inbox.
• Defer Sent Items by one minute
or longer
• Contact Group  to a Contact
Group folder.
Best Practices from Microsoft
USING CATEGORIES
• Outlook Categories  virtually assign
items to many different places.
– Project or People,
– Subjects or Topics and
– Location or Activities.
• Categorize items that must be done and
can’t roll over to another day.
• The big advantages is:
You can apply multiple categories to a single
item — as opposed to filing, where items can live
in only one folder at a time.
• QUICK VIDEO (about 3 minutes)
COLOR CODING CATEGORIES
• What’s the best way to
choose colors?
– Make it visually easy to see what
needs to be done or what has
been done
• Over time, you will be
able to look at your task
list and determine just by
color whether the task is
presently actionable.
SCHEDULE TIME FOR
YOURSELF
Why schedule time for myself?
– your free/busy information will be updated
– people will be less likely to schedule you for
that time.
– this might be the only way you can get
dedicated time to do your job.
– It also helps you to make a commitment to
doing work —
– if you put it on your calendar, you should be
committed to doing that work at that time.
– If someone schedules over your work time,
make sure to reschedule your time.
Don't let time get away from you!
FLAGGING
Flags flexible in a variety of ways:
• If you don’t want to “do” a email task now, you can defer it with a
flag. It automatically creates a task with custom flagged date.
Use the flags to mark tasks and emails as complete when appropriate.
Organizing/Saving/Deleting
Can I Find the email I need?
How best to save the email I might need later?
Strategies for deleting
SORTING
SEARCHING
InBox FOLDERS
FOLDERS/SUBFOLDERS for CURRENT WORK:
Suggested InBox Folders
• 1To Do
– for clinic
– for course
• Project A
• Project B
• Travel notes
• Waiting for reply
PERSONAL STORAGE FOLDERS (.pst*)
FOLDERS for SAVED WORK
ARCHIVING
Personal
Folders
Archives
At UTMB, you needn't worry about archiving.
The server back-up systems are doing that for you.
EMAIL SIZE
THINK ABOUT SPACE
•Do you really need to save this?
•Pay attention to large files
•Don’t save twice (In , Sent)
SIZE MATTERS
• pst files: a Personal Storage Table (.pst)
• size of a .pst is not unlimited
.pst file size limit
MS Outlook 2007 20GB
MS Outlook 2010 50GB
If a PST is getting full, you can create new PSTs
Personal Folder does not
mean "personal" as in "all
about my children" or "photos
from my vacation" Personal
is not private, it just means
storage. Think of this as the
file cabinets in your office
which allow you to get your
'work stuff off' your desk.
At UTMB, the Personal Folders reside on your H:drive,
and your H:drive also has a size limit.
H:drive size limits are department specific.
EMPTY THE TRASH
Automatically: empty every time you close Outlook
Other ways to find things
• CTRL-U (mark as unread)
• Careful Subject Lines
EMERGENCY PLAN
• Empty the trash
• Delete the large files
– Sort on size
– from INBOX, SENT,
DELETED
URGENT CARE PLAN
1. SCHEDULE 30-min’s ON YOUR CALENDAR
2. CREATE two subfolders:
–
–
TO DO
SAVE
3. NOTE the # items in the Box
4. Start the timer
5. SORT
–
–
by FROM – decide whose can be deleted
or by DATE…do you want to delete any mail over X months?
6. DELETE the obvious
7. MOVE “Actionable” items
 TO DO (don’t do them, just move to a ToDo folder)
 SAVE (“Need to save” )
8. NOTE the # items in the Box
end of rotations,
return to large group
Wrap-up:
Lessons learned
“I’m going to …”
www.utmb.edu/pediedtech/email/email.html