How to Reply to E-mails Received Promptly

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By miasavc
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you've got e-mails!

Do you constantly find yourself procrastinating when it comes to replying e-mails? Have you experienced feeling guilty when somebody feel bad about you because you missed replying to an important message from them? Putting off for tomorrow what we can do today is a very common excuse especially when it comes to replying e-mails. It could be a challenge to reply e-mails you got promptly especially if you are a busy person. But disciplining yourself and sticking to the habit of replying to e-mails before they get too old is not only a good practice, it also improves your relationships with your senders. I have a suggestion on how to do this:

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Active e-mail account
Internet connection
Organizer/Pen & Paper
Time
Commitment

Step 1

Practice the habit of checking your e-mails everyday. We all get excited to check daily our online profiles in social networking sites as well as in various revenue generating sites where we have an account (such as eHow)that we put off checking our e-mail inbox for last. If you check your e-mails regularly you will have less chances of forgetting those messages that need to be replied.
Step 2

Go online and open your e-mail account. Go thru the messages and check for spam e-mails. If you are a busy person, practice checking your inbox and scan quickly the messages to see which ones are junk. Get rid of them right away so you can focus on the ones that are not.
Step 3

Always have a pen and paper/notebook with you. This will help you record important things to do during the day. This comes as a handy tool also for recording e-mails that needs to be replied. Designate a separate section in your notebook for this purpose or you can have a separate notebook used solely for keeping track of replied e-mail messages. On a clean page, put the date you are reading the e-mail then draw 4 columns on the bottom of the date. Mark the first column as “Sender“. This is where you will put the name of the person who sent you the e-mail or simply his/her e-mail address. Mark the rest of the columns as 1, 2, 3. Each number represents the urgency of the message from the sender. 1 stands for most urgent, 2 less urgent, and 3 is for least urgent messages. You decide which e-mails will fall under the above categories.
Step 4

Go back to your e-mail inbox and go thru the remaining e-mail messages you received for the day (after the spam e-mails are deleted). Open individual e-mails one by one and scan quickly the message. This is ideal if you have limited time to check your e-mail. But if you have plenty of time, you can read every message thoroughly. After reading the e-mail, put the sender’s name on the appropriate column mentioned in step 3. You also have the option to use the “flag” feature provided by e-mail service providers to mark the message as very urgent and needs to be replied right away. Click on the right side of the e-mail message and you will see a red flag beside it. You may or may not record this message in your notebook under column 1 but it is still recommended as a reminder. Continue working on the rest of the e-mails until you are done.
Step 5

Once you are done, refer to your list and see which e-mail messages need immediate attention. If your time allows, reply to messages that fall under column 1 right away. Make it your goal to reply to e-mails under column 1 and 2 within the day or all of them. When you make this a habit, it gets much easier and faster to write your replies. If you were only able to work on e-mails that fall under column 1 for the day, make sure to work on replying the rest on the following day after you have evaluated and replied the most urgent e-mails for that day.
Step 6

Discipline yourself to practice the habit of replying e-mails as soon as you got them. Writing back replies not more than three days old shows your commitment and responsibility. You will have fewer backlogs, less cluttered inbox, better communication with the sender, and most important of all is you save yourself the guilt and stress of not being efficient enough to reply the e-mails being sent to you.