Stress Relievers #1

Business E-Mails are like the scourge of God, only more unforgiving. As if the roaring hordes of Mongols on horseback wasn’t bad enough, countless workers and managers alike suffer from extreme stress due to the innumerable edicts and commandments from Bosses, Customers, Clients and Colleagues.

I used to have this tendency to set my E-Mail on get mail every 5 minutes AND still manually push the get mail button in between because of my nervousness to get things settled quickly.

I figured out that, hey, I am not directly in the business of customer service, I can afford to take things a little easier. Clicking the button and nervously wait for the mail might have waste a few seconds on my time, but accumulate them together and they added up to a few minutes a day. I thought it over, took a deep breath and devised the following personal guidelines for my e-mail sanity

1. E-Mails should be read only at certain times of the day. Say, after coffee, after lunch and an hour before finishing work

2. Turn off the E-Mail Client’s Auto-Get Mails.

3. Plan each day only after the initial round of answering E-mail.

4. Gently remind others of my e-mail habits and should a notification be needed, it would be given by the end of the day.

5. At the end of the day, answer all the e-mails, leave no unanswered e-mails behind.

6. As much as possible, I should leave my bloody work laptop in the office.