Top 3 Steps To Prioritise 700+ Emails A Week (As A Consultant)

Learn a few simple tricks to make your inbox clearance a productive activity.

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pexels

As a manager in Consulting with a few parallel running projects, I receive over 700 emails a week.

The process that I created early on in my career is serving me well. As it helps me to prioritise my work stack and reduce noise.

I Broadly Follow These 3 Principles (Inspired By Tim Ferris’ 4-Hour Workweek):

#1 Eliminating noise before delegating

#2 Prioritising by categorising

#3 Be efficient by batching

Let’s deep dive into each of these principles.

#1 Eliminating noise before delegating

A significant number of items from my inbox will be delegated to my team members. But it’s important to eliminate the noise before you delegate. Otherwise, you’ll waste your teams’ time.

Elimination can be carried out in a few ways:

• Automate deletion from known email address/junk such as weekly newsletters from your old team. In short, emails where no action needs to be taken.