Processing email after time away (vacation, holiday, etc.)

[Botany_Bill]

I'm sure this topic has come up in this forum already, but I haven't been able to find it:

I'd love to hear how others successfully process email that builds up while away from work for a few days or longer. For instance, is the first day back all about getting email to zero? If other things keep you from processing emails on day 1, how do you handle the backlog? Do you dump it all in a "to be processed" folder so it doesn't get muddy with new messages?

I'm sure part of my problem is that I haven't yet mastered email-to-zero. But there's something about the added backlog after a few days off that makes it mentally harder for me.

 

[Oogiem]

I typically get 200-300 email messages a dayu. So If I am gone or not ansawering/processing for a while it builds up. I take several days to do the clean-up. Here is my procedure YMMV

Day 1 - Do a quick scan through my inbox (where all potentially good messages end up) and immediately trash all that I can. I find it helpful to sort based on sender because often I only need to keep the last message in a string, or I have a bunch of email newsletter that I can just dump because they are not critical. I can also scan for the really urgent need an answer now ones and try to handle them at this time even if it take more than 2 minutes.

Day 2 thru X - Start with the oldest messages and actually process them as per normal. My brain can't handle dealing with more than a couple hundred before I'm burned out so this may take several days Along the way if I find particularly sticky ones that will take a long (as in 30-40 minutes to properly handle and process) I dump them into my action support folder. Not ideal but I find it works better for me that way. I more or less ignore the 2 minute rule during this process. I need to get them done in sequence and switching into a new project is not helpful. Delaying the effor to handle it is also not helpful. My goal is to get back to near inbox zero with everything handled in an orderly fashion. I flip between by date and by sender sorting during this process.

Day X thru Y typically about days 3-4. Go back through action support and just do the work to handle those messages.

 

[DKPhoto]

Set up a separate email address/account just for handling all the newsletters and stuff that isn’t important.

Then only use your main account for important people, that way you are only expending effort on important emails, maximising the efficiency of the time you give to it.

 

[mcogilvie]

I think from the replies you’re getting it’s clear there is no consensus. Personally, I try to keep up with email while travelling to the extent of at least forwarding actionable email to my inbox in Things. If I can’t do that, I will flag such email. On my desktop, I can sort by From, and delete quite a bit; it’s a tip I learned from David Allen years ago.

 

[Gardener]

I'm sure this topic has come up in this forum already, but I haven't been able to find it:

I'd love to hear how others successfully process email that builds up while away from work for a few days or longer. For instance, is the first day back all about getting email to zero? If other things keep you from processing emails on day 1, how do you handle the backlog? Do you dump it all in a "to be processed" folder so it doesn't get muddy with new messages?

I'm sure part of my problem is that I haven't yet mastered email-to-zero. But there's something about the added backlog after a few days off that makes it mentally harder for me.

I walk through the backlog making quick judgements about what's obviously not actionable and what could be actionable.

Low priority: That usually leads to about eighty percent being declared not actionable and dumped in the folder of email for the year.

High priority: If anything in the remainder seems urgent, I either (1) deal with immediately or (2) enter a task in my task list for the day and then drag the mail into my "read this" folder.

Mid priority: I put what's left into the same "read this" folder and my inbox is empty.

 

[dtj]

First of all, go into the vacation with something like Inbox Zero helps. I pretty much keep up with email while I am on vacation, mostly because I get a manageable amount of work emails and it doesn't infringe on the enjoyment of the vacation. I'm not in a position where I am obligated to immediately respond, even during the work day, so I feel even less obligated on vacation, so basically not at all.

If I let emails pile up, work or home, I quickly whip through them and get rid of the obvious cruft. Sorting by subject or from is probably the best single way of being ruthless, as then the frequent mailing lists are grouped for nuking. It's basically just the same techniques that I use when pare down before vacation, except to don't read queued interesting stuff to get off my plate.

 

[John Forrister]

For me, part of planning the vacation is planning for after the vacation. I allow for 60-90 minutes of input processing time for each day of vacation. That's for a real vacation without working. I also would propose a later date for any meeting invitations that try to get calendar time immediately after the vacation that would require me to be caught up on a topic that may have changed while I've been off.

For those who say they need to be up to speed the moment they're back at work, I would ask if their vacation budget includes ground transportation to the airport, luggage fees, etc. The time budget deserves just as much planning.

 

[Livtally]

Especially when the e-mail volume builds up, I find the batch processing techniques outlined in the Stack Method (https://www.stackmethod.com/) helpful and quite compatible with GTD principles. As you clarify what your inbox has captured, deleting or archiving anything you can along the way, you pitch the actionable messages into folders/labels based on the type of action the e-mail demands, e.g.:

• Reply (for simple, straightforward replies)
• Do (requires completing an action that will take you 5+ minutes)
• Meet (when the next action involves scheduling)
• Forward (pass information along to others, transfer info or attachments to another platform beyond e-mail)
• Review
• Remind/Waiting For.

The initial clarifying and organizing will give you a rough sense of the priority of the accumulated "stuff." With whatever remaining time you want to allot to e-mail activities on Day 1, review the contents of those action folders and handle the highest priority items that have landed in the Reply, Meet, or Forward categories. This will help move a variety of projects along where your input was the bottleneck - and maybe move some tasks and projects off your plate if you can use the Forward category to delegate some things. You've already decided that items that have landed in the "Do" category will require more intense attention and effort. Any of these you cannot or choose not to handle on Day 1 are good candidates for (1) time blocking on your calendar and/or (2) forwarding to a task management system to ensure that they receive appropriate and timely attention; you can flag or star these "Do" e-mails to remind yourself at a glance that they are on their way to being handled. On subsequent days of backlog processing, work through the next-highest-priority "easy" e-mails that are still waiting for attention in the action folders, devote more attention to messages targeted for Review, and leverage your larger GTD system to deal with the "effort" e-mails you still need to DO something about!

 

[bishblaize]

I had this recently, got back from leave to find the inevitable 300+ emails waiting for me. One helpful change was that I upped the 2 minute rule for something more like a 5 to 10 minute rule. Same principle for processing as usual, I was just prepared to spend a little longer ticking off quickish actions. That way I didnt get that feeling of piling work onto my Projects list.

 

[bishblaize]

Set up a separate email address/account just for handling all the newsletters and stuff that isn’t important.

Then only use your main account for important people, that way you are only expending effort on important emails, maximising the efficiency of the time you give to it.

I use Feedbin for this purpose. You give them a dedicated Feedbin email address and then it collects the newsletters & lets you see them in a reader app instead of your email inbox.

 

[DKPhoto]

I use Feedbin for this purpose. You give them a dedicated Feedbin email address and then it collects the newsletters & lets you see them in a reader app instead of your email inbox.

To be honest I mostly don’t read them.

I usually subscribe to get the discount and stay subscribed if I think I might order again from them, so I can get a heads up on new discounts that they are offering.

Currently i have 18,000+ unread emails in there, but it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

I do have a smart mailbox set up showing the last 7 days emails in there, which i do occasionally scan just to see if there’s anything I might want to do something about, which then gets forwarded to my task manager inbox, or just flagged depending on what i might want to do with it.

If i am thinking of buying something I will search for the company(ies) i buy from to see if any are offering a deal, and you can usually get a good insight into how frequently they offer discounts and when.

If i see that they usually offer a discount at a certain time of year and i can wait then it gets added to my tickler.

 

[Stefan Godo]

this is easy and comes up frequently with corporate clients (200+ daily = 2k+ for a two week vacation), the same procedure holds for 10k+ backlog

The whole process has only ONE goal, find and process the highest risks and biggest opportunities (in this order)

0. obviously having smart rules ahead helps (Cc, newsletters, etc). But if you do not have them:

1. 1st sorting per sender - find only the most important senders - process those from last to oldest
plenty of irrelevant stuff can be bulk deleted or archived right away

once done (with 2k takes 1-2-3 h max)

you know that there is no major risk and opportunity = you have time to process the backlog:

create folders for "old mail to process", (for large backlogs even for 2023-, jan24, etc) create a project and do the relevant action IF YOU HAVE TIME.

Keep current day/week at zero and if you have spare time, process older stuff gradually.
Usually you will stop at month-1, delete/archive the rest.

sorting in threads helps bulk processing too - the last message usually contains the whole foreplay /actual status = rest can be archived

 

[DKPhoto]

If I was going to receive 2K plus emails from a 2 week vacation I would set up an OOO saying that all emails received during my vacation are being deleted, with the email address of someone they can contact if urgent, and telling them to email when I'm back if they still need my input.

If I get an OOO, and want to make sure that person sees my message, I will make a note of when they're back and send them another email a day or two after they're back (just to try and avoid being part of the deluge), regardless of whether they say mine will deleted or not.