Managing your inbox requires dedication. You need a plan. Do you need abbreviations. One such acronym is RAFT, which will literally keep you afloat in the sea of emails you receive every day. You can combine it with others, for example LIFO And 4D to maximize its benefits, but first you need to know what to do with it yourself.
What is RAFT Email Management?
RAFT means the following:
Easy! With this management system, you first spend time reading the email and then act on it the way you want:If you need to do this before you hide or delete it somewhere. That's essentially all there is to it, but it works because it requires you to focus on each individual email and evaluate it right away so you don't miss anything.
How one and two touch rulesthis requires you to open your emails as they arrive. For me this is the hardest part because it is a habit you have to develop. This approach reminds me of a more widely applicable productivity technique that I often use, namely: two minute rule. When you think about something or are asked to deal with it, deal with it immediately. Again, it's a habit that needs to be developed, but I like this approach for all kinds of productivity challenges – and with RAFT, you have a clearly defined series of next steps once you open it.
How to Get the Most Out of RAFT
To maximize the benefits, you should combine this with another system or two. For example, combine RAFT with LIFO method – “last in, first out”which requires you to respond to the most recent emails before older ones. If you do this, you will always act on your most pressing needs, instead of endlessly catching up on things you've lost sight of. If something from the past is really important, you will receive an email and can RAFT. Otherwise, keep the most relevant and recent messages and read them, act on them, and then save or throw them away.
What are your thoughts so far?
As for the acting role, you can call a reliable 4D method that will help you. The four D's are delethe, dO, delope, or defer, and they are four things you can do with any email. (Removing here is unnecessary since “junk” is part of RAFT, but it is useful to reinforce the idea that useless emails must be blown up.) Either do what the email says or delegate it to someone who can, but keep the process moving quickly. If you are unable to forward it to someone else, delete it or set it aside (save it). The main rule of RAFTA is that you must do anything with every message rather than ignoring it.
For the file component of RAFT, make sure you have a great file system in place beforehand. If you use Gmail, consider using tags as a more organized archiving systemto make whatever you choose to save more accessible. You can tag these mini-archives by date, by project, or whatever makes sense for your search, but be consistent about it so you don't just send all processed messages into email limbo.
