by Mandy Green, Busy Coach
Have you ever had your productivity stalled because you were waiting to get what you needed from somebody?
I’m sure we all have at some point. As you know, it is pretty hard to move forward faster if you stuck in waiting mode.
So today, the tip I want to give you for speeding up your progress is to send your help emails as a first action in the morning. Meaning, you are going to send out an email first thing in the morning for people to send you what you need so you can move forward faster.
To do this, I first want you to identify where you need help and then think about what could trip you up or slow you down that day if you don’t have it. Write it down. Ideally this is done the night before.
Then, when you figure out what you need to move forward that day, you need to decide if you will delegate the task to someone, or if you should send an email to ask for the information you need.
Now it is time to actually open your email BUT DO NOT GET SUCKED IN TO CHECKING ALL OF YOUR EMAIL!!! With your email now open, first look to see if what you will need has already been sent. If it is not there, send the email to get the information you need to complete a project you are working on.
Second, send a to-do list email to whoever you will be delegating a task to which you started to prepare the night before. I find that coworkers will appreciate when you send just one email of what you want them to do for the day first thing when you get in rather than sending multiple emails throughout the day or stopping in every time something new comes up. It will require you to be a lot more organized but it gets them going on their day, they don’t have to waste time reading multiple to-do emails from you, they don’t have to deal with you constantly interrupting them, and you don’t have to deal with them coming in looking for things to do which will save you all a lot of time.
If you can manage to look through your email to see if you got something you were waiting for and then send emails out to delegate to others before you check any other emails, you can achieve so much faster. If you get all those emails out in the morning, guess what comes back, the answers and now you’ve got what you need to progress forward faster.
Some of you wait until the end of the day to send the email when you realize you need to get something, but everyone’s going home.
You see how one simple turn can help you progress so much faster? Again, I need you to look at your inbox and say, did any of these people who sent anything, is it someone I’ve been waiting on to complete a task? If not, don’t open it. Period. Don’t open your Macy’s coupon email. What are you doing? No, you’re not done with your needle moving results list yet. You don’t get to open up dumb emails until you have made progress.
Stay on your A game coach. This is a simple strategy that will require some extra thought and intention first thing in the morning. If you are committed to making 2024 better than 2024, these simple little techniques can make all the difference in the world to help you achieve things faster.