Email overload is a serious problem. Executives and employees alike spend a huge amount of their day wasting time on pointless group chats and navigating through a whole page filled with pointless emails. It takes 20 minutes to refocus after reading an email. When your inbox is full to bursting, it's time to take action.
The Pyrus platform is a brand new revamped communication tool that compiles all those chat boxes and emails into tasks, so you can keep everything on-point. Whether you're a small or big business, you can make sure that all your conversations are working towards a specific goal.
Why Email Overload Happens
Sometimes you're just busy, but most people are overloaded with emails because they have lots of pointless communications and they need to clear their inbox. The first step in getting rid of email overload is to eliminate the things that are of no purpose. Google Gmail did this a few years ago when they segregated the Social and Promotions tabs, so those Facebook updates didn't appear in your conventional inbox.
Pyrus does a similar thing by letting you organize your tasks into projects. You will always know to which area of your work each of your tasks belong. Also, unlike the traditional email, Pyrus allows you to easily unsubscribe from any task, and after that nobody will waste your attention by just adding you to CC without thinking.
This is the principle of cleaning up your inbox and making sure that what you are working on is relevant.
How to Make Sure You're Working On Something Relevant
Sometimes the greatest difficulty you have is making sure that what you're talking about is actually relevant. It's a matter of self-discipline. You need to make sure that you're not bringing up anything irrelevant when you're trying to work. This is part of the reason why irrelevant emails from people not relevant to work should be kept separate.
Take a deep breath and prioritize the most important tasks of the day. Once you have that list, you can begin to focus on the email conversations that are most relevant.
For example, the Pyrus platform will allow you to assign tasks by due date and by importance. That way you can pick out the most important tasks, and you know when certain issues need to be addressed.
The Visual Overload
One of the biggest problems experienced by people in business is that their email inboxes can have hundreds of unread messages. And most of these could be from the same person. Think back to how original email inboxes used to work. You would receive a message whenever anything happened.
Make sure you are working with an email client that compiles messages. Every message you receive should be compiled into a conversation. You could have 84 messages from the same person, but they should be compiled into one line. Only when you click on that person's name should you be able to see all the unread emails.
Sometimes email overload, and the associated feelings of stress, is a psychological thing. If you have a full screen filled with unread emails, it can cause you to panic. During that panic you become incredibly unproductive and it can become difficult to get a grip on that.
The goal is to sort out the visual side of things.
Change Your Thinking
And sometimes you just need to alter the way you think. You need to think about what an email really is. Business is about getting things done and so should email. Through Pyrus, it's easy to bring together group chat and email and turn them into 'tasks'.
Such a simple change can have a huge effect because when you look at something as a task to be completed you want to get to that goal as soon as possible.
That will naturally prevent any temptation to start talking about non-work items.
Be Time Savvy
Sometimes you have to set a limit for how long you are going to spend on emails. If you allow yourself to get carried away, you can spend the whole morning just working on emails. This is not a good use of your time and it's going to come back to bite you.
Part of overcoming email overload is not just about knowing what to prioritize. It's about prioritizing your whole business day. For example, you may decide that you have to stop looking at emails after an hour. The pressures of time will encourage you to prioritize.
Conclusion - Outside Help
Pyrus is one platform available for desktop and mobile that has proven extremely effective at overcoming email overload. By transforming your inbox and combining email and group chat, you are making it more likely that you will stop becoming stressed about emails and increase your productivity.
How will you stop becoming overwhelmed with emails today?