“If you wanna change the world, start off by making your bed”- W.H.McRaven

Just as the day starts with making your bed, productivity starts from an organized desk.

Did you know that an average office worker spends 76 hours per year looking for different emails, searching for digital and paper documents and office supplies (C. Sutton 2020)? Other research claims that on average, we spend 4,5 hours per week looking for documents. In addition to searching, we also recreate documents, which in reality are already existing "somewhere in a safe place" (A. Syal 2017)

And this is not where it ends, in addition to that, we also look for missing items in our homes for approximately 5000 hours within a lifetime: it is more than 6,5 months of searching (Ikea 2017).

What is the next step?

Book yourself 1-3 hours without interruptions.

1. Clear your workplace: go through all the paper that is on your desk, clean drawers, clean laptop bag, dust, eliminate items that you do not use, make sure that stationery (e.g. pen, notebook etc.) that you use for everyday work is there and working properly.

2. Clear all the computer files: delete files that you do not use, check out the folders and the documents and other files that are inside the folders, manage shortcuts, eliminate programs that you do not use - keep it simple.

Keep the notes and documents, that you use on a specific day, on your desk. We cannot handle all the topics at once within one day. Keeping topical documents and activities that must be proceeded (e.g. notepapers acting as a to do list) on the desk does not create additional value, rather they remind you of the tasks, what you have not completed yet (K. Gleesson 2008).

So, you´re developing a new habit to check your mailbox no more than 3-4 times a day. You have also turned off different mailbox notifications, but the volume of emails is still large. Is there anything else you can do?

Firstly, you´re not alone. Most people who use email on a daily basis have felt overwhelmed by email. That is a great communication tool, but people often overuse it (Content Team 2020). Being buried under emails will not just make you ineffective, it may also make you sick (C. Cooper 2019).

The average office worker receives around 80-120 emails every workday. They produce a bit less, about 30-40 emails per day (Templafy 2020).

Despite of social media and instant messaging platforms, we still use emails. In fact, the humble email is still in top form as over 306 billion emails (business and consumer) sent and received per day in 2020 (S. Anacleto 2021). This number is expected to grow to over 361 billion by 2024 (Radicati 2017). From 4 billion to expect 4.4 billion users by the end of 2024, it is foolish to hope that the number of received and sent email will decrease in the near future.

What can you do about a large number of emails?

Considering that you have organized your email, established “rules and filters” that sort email into a particular folder, unsubscribed from things you don´t read: there are a couple of additional things you can do:

1.  Develop a habit to declutter your inbox on a daily basis. Start doing it once a week;

2.  Send less emails, you´ll receive less (N. Eyal 2020);

3.  You do not need to answer within 5 minutes and you do not need to answer every email you receive (answering extremely fast to every email does not show to your colleagues, that you are a hard worker);

4.  If you read an email, do something with it. Avoid reading one email 4-5 times or more without taking any action (K. Gleeson 2008).

Back to work:)