I used to work as a Project Manager for a Swiss engineering company who operated in the oil and gas industry. As you can imagine there was a lot of money flowing around which was only matched by the sheer quantity of emails bouncing back and forth through inboxes. Most days it was like email ping pong around the office with managers, personal, clients. engineers, shop workers, bosses and even the secretary getting involved.

As a project manager we averaged around 100-300 emails a day and were expected to get through them. This routinely added a good few hours to my day and as I was always quite fond of my free time out of the office, this was a problem for me.

Now not everyone will be getting this quantity of email every day but the principles below I used to reduce the amount I actually had to look at by around 90% from 100-300 a day to less than 20 can be applied to anyones inbox.

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1. For Gods sake stop checking your email every 5 minutes

Trust me, nothing in life is that important. Not clients, not problems, not England winning the world cup ( ? ).

No matter how important you think you are there is never a need for people to always have instant access to you.

If you don’t believe me go on holiday for a week and don’t reply to any emails. People work out ways around you if the need is great enough, even personal clients will forgive you.

I try to only check my emails once a day, and I did this even as a project manager so don’t tell me that it is different for you as it is not. Most people have an inflated sense of worth which is why they think they are so important everyone must has access to them. Sorry guys, life does go on without you.

Let your emails batch up and only check them at a certain time for a specific amount of time.

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2. You don’t actually need to read most of the emails you get

Again, look past how important you think you are and think about the amount of emails you actually have to answer. The ones that are directly sent solely to you or are solely for you action mainly. Usually in any business this is very few. In project management it is very, very few though most PM’s will tell you this is not the case.

Get into the habit of only answering emails that are sent directly to you and only you and that will need actioning by you and only you. These are the priority, anything else can wait or can be ignored. Almost all the time there will be no repercussions.

This leads me onto point 3.

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3. Take the time to set up email rules.

I reduced the amount of emails I got in any given day most dramatically by taking an hour to set up some rules. Here they are:

Rule 1: Any email directed to me and only me was highlighted in Red – These are the ones I have to answer and were the only ones that appeared directly in my inbox.

Rule 2: Any email directed to me and another person was highlighted in blue and sent to a “Potential Box” These emails were more often than not answered by the other guy and never came back to me. However if there was a problem I had easy access to the emails.

Rule 3: Any email that I was CC’d on was sent straight to an “Information Folder” and I never looked at them unless someone specifically emailed me on a subject that I would then look up easily using the search. Contrary to popular belief a project manager does not need to know everything about everything that is going on in his project, people are competent if you trust them. A project manager is there to oversee not control and it is the same in other professions.

Rule 4: Write a professional email responder that lets people know how you operate in emails and that if it is incredibly important to send you an email with FYA in the subject line and sent only to you. This has to be tactfully done as many of the rules I set up were not allowed at my company and won’t be at many others. It didn’t stop me from using them because I knew I was more productive that way but I had to be careful that others didn’t know I was using them. People don’t like change in big companies, be sneaky.

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4. Get people talking to each other.

As a project manager you can get caught up in lots of office love triangles ( and not the good ones ) between clients and engineers and internal staff and the shop floor assistance along with the odd intern and these said love triangles are birthed and developed through email. Cut it out quickly.

If everything is coming though you at each interaction there is always a lot of lost in translation problems or at the very best you have you to keep forwarding the emails to the right people and you become a glorified data transferrer. Lots of wasted time.

This problem can be easily removed by setting up policies where people email each other and CC you into the conversations. You will obviously only then look at it if there is a problem but 9 times out of ten things go smoothly. Learn to smile and talk to people.

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5. Send Concise Emails

In todays age of easy and instant communication we have lost the art of being concise and asking for what you want. Back when a letter between businesses would take 2 weeks to turn around it was important to write well so that there was no confusion on what was needed and by when, how and by whom. We have lost that mostly in this age, so you need to get back into the habit.

Don’t just send emails for the sake of it and CC everyone in on it. Know what the aim of the email is and be concise, email the correct person and only others if completely necessary. Include all the detail so it doesn’t come bouncing back within 20 minutes asking you to clarify.

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6. Weed Out Your Trouble Makers

Unfortunately there are always people in business that just love emails and sending them. They seem to think they are doing a better job because of it. They will send them in the early hours of the morning and CC every in on it, or ask stupid questions and reply with one word answers. These are the people that start calling you and sending repeat emails if you don’t get back to them within 20 minutes. They have far too much time on their hands and are a pain in the ass.

Create a special folder for these people and start to slowly phase them out by ignoring them.

Usually they will get more aggressive initially but just keep a record of their pointless emails to use in your defence later on if the issue goes higher. Usually, shown the evidence of their foolishness you will never have a problem.

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To Sum Up

You might think that your job does not allow this type of approach but just remember, I was a Project Manager of a multi billion pound global company and personally had responsibility for many millions of pounds worth of project and clients.

I used these rules and it made my life a hell of a lot easier. I was never fired, reprimanded or brought before the boss. My project, far from collapsing actually ran smoother and I freed up many hours every day.

Do not instantly reject this approach, it WILL save you many, many hours.

Help Me Out

I give all this advice out for free and so if you like what I write and it helped you, please help me out by letting others know. On this site, it has been scientifically proven that by doing so you will become instantly twice as attractive to the opposite sex. Can’t argue with science.

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