Ugh! Post holiday email - my low tech tips for getting it done

Holidays are great. Time to unwind, relax, spend time with loved ones and forget about work for a while. Getting back to work is often a challenge with the build up of email being one of the issues to cope with.

I've developed a bit of a system for dealing with the email build up which kind of works for me and I thought it might be useful to share. It's fairly low tech and I'm sure that there are more sophisticated ways of doing a similar thing.

For what it's worth here are my 5 D's for clearing the backlog:

Diary time

Allow some time on your first day back to start to clear the backlog. If you can book this in your diary before you go away, that's ideal. You can then spend some uninterrupted time working through your emails. The sooner it's done, the sooner you will feel 'caught up' and be able to get back into your stride

Delete

Getting rid of any SPAM, things that don't require action etc is a positive first step. It's a good idea to unsubscribe from mailing lists you are not interested in and mark unwelcome email to go straight to junk in future.

Delegate

If you are lucky enough to have people working for you, maybe there are things which can be delegated. You can either forward the email with a note for action or print/save in a folder for next time you have an opportunity to discuss it with the person you are delegating to. Even if you don't have people working for you there may be emails you need to pass on for someone else to deal with or perhaps refer upwards to your boss

Deal with now

If you can respond to an email easily, straight away, it's best to get it done. Maybe set a reminder to follow up if a response is required from the recipient. It's off your list for now

Deal with later

For chunkier jobs you can't respond to straight away add these to your work list or direct to your calendar to deal with later. You might print or save the email as a reference for when you start the work. You might also send a holding email to say you have noted the contents and will respond in due course. You can then tackle this at a later date with a clear head.

That's it! I did say it was low tech

With focussed effort I find I can usually clear the mountain a lot faster than seemed possible at first glance. I've then got the larger tasks scheduled and can work through these over the next few days.

It's still not easy leaving the holiday mood behind but this simple system works for me and after a week or two I'm usually back in the normal routine and hopefully not feeling swamped.

Almost time to start thinking about the next holiday...

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