My Inbox is rarely having less than 20 ´unread´ messages. All round the clock I am regularly bombarded with news of all kinds, from highly emergency clients, rescheduled meetings or some unexpected friendly mail from friends I haven´t been in touch for years. At the same time, my WhatsApp is rarely sleeping, as my contacts are spread all over the world, operating mostly - as I do - on a full schedule. My secret to ´normality´ is being multi-tasking and over-active therefore, answering various requests or formulating myself some is never exhausting. It is part of my everyday pace.
However, I know that my personal life is suffering sometimes, I don´t remember how many times my son mentioned that I am with my head deep into my phone - for a few seconds though, that for him feel like hours. In any case, I need a better time management not in the detriment of my personal life, but by finding ways to save it. For instance, feeling self-aware - of indifferent, depending of your priority lists - enough to refuse answering that client who is bombarding me with various kind of rhetorical requests between 7am and 10 am on a holy Saturday morning...
Thus, my interest for a book like The Happy Inbox. How to Have a Stress-Free Relationship with your Email and Overcome your Communication Clutter by motivational speaker and productivity expert Maura Thomas.
The book is short and concise, therefore can be easily read in-between commuting or while waiting a late meeting to (finally) start. It has important tips about how to set up filters that may automatically select the important from the non-important emails. It also recommends, among others, using a separate email for newsletters and other time-consuming messages that can be read in your spare time as well.
More than a time management tool for your inbox, it does recommend also a couple of measures to be taken while preparing a meeting, including by trying to get to know the participants and their eventual mindset, and also being ready for the delays or how to further send information to the absent members of the team.
Personally, I would have expect more focus on the emails only, including by mentioning the pros and cons of using various emails - Yahoo vs. Google etc. - or a step-by-step guide about how to actually organise your time in a way that avoids getting overloaded and in the end, burned out. However, for a medium cluttered email and a mild overburned hard working employee or freelancer, the book do include enough tips to get you started into the next steps of a better work-life balance.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Disclaimer: Book offered by the editor in exchange for an honest review
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