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Best advice I could ever give someone with this kind of desk is time blocking, have a proper planner with an hourly breakdown and plan your day accordingly. I use my inbox as my task list and once I’ve done the task I mark the email as read. I highly recommend the full focus planner it’s fairly perfect for a very busy person.
Agree with the tasking of emails! It helps tremendously. I have also asked my clients to put in their subject line if something is urgent or on a regulatory deadline. That way, I can prioritize better. If you have support, I’ve my admin triage for me in terms of asking for their response time frame and keeping up a log... that way, if we’ve answered a question before, she finds it, let’s me or a para know and sometimes - it goes right off my plate much more easily.
I would do a couple things (not knowing how your meeting schedule is also)
1. Spend an hour first thing in the day just organizing - whether that's folders / labels to indicate a realistic priority
2. Dedicate an amount of time and just have one email open - I cannot do a side by side pane bc I get anxiety seeing more emails come in. So 1 physical window be the email and your draft response, 1 window be a place for you to be doing research. Then move on to the next email in that folder/ label
3. Once your dedicated time is done, take a break and come back to whatever your day is - whether it's a couple meetings or another cycle where you do a clean up, prioritize and run of emails
If truly everything is urgent and the only expectation for you is to be in your email tasks all day just take them in the order they came in.
But for real - turn off side by side pane. When you are working one email, only be working that email, not also thinking about the 20 that just came in.
Be intentional with each task get it done before moving to the next. I learned that our attention span these days are at 10 min max and we are constantly switching gears for no reason. I’m trying to do this too, it’s too easy to be distracted but you’re not alone!
Setup rules in Outlook if you haven't already. All of my emails automatically file in the correct subject folders as I receive them. Saves tons of time and helps to easily know where to prioritize. I have rules based on the sender and certain subject titles. I use the flag feature for anything still requiring action and mark it done when completed.
Omg turn off side panel !!! That’s been what’s distracting
It might be helpful to do some self care tricks before and after work. For instance breathing techniques and meditating. This can help to set the preface for your day. I noticed others mentioned things that can be helpful too like time blocking, using a planner, and even doing a brain dump. It's important to remind yourself that those emails will always be there and always pile up and maybe set a daily goal for yourself. It's easy to get burnt out so take care of you!! If things are really overwhelming, anti-anxiety medications help to regain focus and minimize worry on the lesser issues. Hope this helps.
Perhaps coordinate w/ your workplace’s in-house IT gurus to get their insights on how your workplace email inbox’s Search bar to be used to identify the deadlines of anything regulatory.
That way, you could at least arrange things by chronological deadlines initially, and then filter out more to see w/c ones need multi-step prep even if final audit/submission/deadline is still far away.
There are also Software as a Service (SaaS) subscription platforms w/ advanced Artificial Intelligence/AI and Machine Learning/ML features like HyperProof that might prove helpful to you staying on top of Governance/Regulatory/Compliance (GRC) tasks in automated, continuous compliance fashion rather than relying on mountains of email reminders.
My colleagues also at Sensitel are capable of cost effectively customizing a GRC application for clients too. You could privately DM me to see if I might be able to point you in the right direction.
Hopefully your workplaces have the open mindedness and budgets to invest in secure SaaS AI & ML automation platform tools to help w/ the growing tidal wave of GRC requirements.
Otherwise, my earlier suggestion of rationalizing further your email inbox alerts might at least be a 1st step to organize stuff by timely next action points expected.
Anxiety meds have helped me to stay focused and not get overwhelmed as often when everything is priority and needed yesterday!
I want to hire someone to read and answer all my email for me. I don’t have time to look at all that garbage
If you and/or your company has the budget & benefits perks ready to pay a responsible, trustworthy human to intelligently sort, answer, & follow through all your work-related emails, it would likely have placed the job ads and hired & trained someone or a bunch of people to do this a long time ago, right?
Unfortunately not all companies have the dough to pay for multiple human talents to diligently handle work-related correspondence.
I recall high-earning movie stars paying for fan mail processing services staffed by vetted humans, so they never alienate their support base for their popularity and brand.
Suffice it to say, though, none of us are A-List, own brand multi-merchandise empire-owning movie stars in this thread, right?;)
Most companies honestly either hire 1 presumed highly efficient human w/ sizeable pay & perks to master email filtering & templates w/ their proven durable reading comprehension, concise template writing, and critical thinking/analytical skills to integrate such tasks into his/her/their workflow - and/or they could pay to subscribe to or custom-build secure SaaS AI & ML platform or app to make workflows more visibly manageable.
FYI I realized that some promoted & sincerely hard-working executives I have encountered throughout my career may have always been inefficient readers and writers all along (or may even be harboring undiagnosed/untreated dyslexia, ADD, vision/auditory processing issues, etc.) since their K-12 schools, colleges/universities, & parents did them a huge disservice in never explicitly catching & correcting their issues in the 1st place.
These types of professionals need to discreetly set aside time to get remedial/therapeutic skills tutoring (ex. Speed reading classes) and/or access special tech AI/ML accommodations that their hopefully considerate employers will invest in.
Otherwise, for the rest of us who do not qualify for special accommodations but are swamped w/ way too much email that unfortunately have varying valid levels of urgency, our IT dept. colleagues and some employer-covered sensible SaaS AI/ML apps ideally should be engaged to help prevent worker burnout!
Here for the solutions. I have the same
Problem
Look into Superhuman! It’s expensive but it changed my life, if you can get it covered by work given how awful this has been for you!
Set up folders for items you don't necessarily need to look at everyday not all emails need your attention
You work at BMC....that's your problem! It's one of the worst places to work at in Boston...
You cannot time manage or self care your way out of excessive workload. The responsibility is on the company to resolve. Period.