The Ontario Broker - April 2019 - 33

Enter Barbara Green, President of Think
Productive, North America. Think
Productive offers workshops and training
on time management, email management
and productivity.
"Your attention and your focus are the
most important resources you have in
a day. They're your currency and you
should spend it wisely."
Barbara has a lot of thoughts about email.
Not her own email. The idea of email.
"The average person spends at least three
hours on email. If email is taking a large
proportion of our day then we have to be
organized about how we approach it. We
really recommend people get to Inbox Zero."
For those who haven't heard the term, Inbox
Zero is a rigorous approach to managing
your email where your ultimate aim is to
keep your inbox completely empty.
"The important thing is to get away from
the idea that your inbox is your to-do
list, because it's not. It's just where work
comes in, but then we have to manage that
work, put it in the right place and go do
that work."
She recommends a system of three main
folders that sit at the top of your directory
in your inbox:
@Action - These are to-do items
@Waiting - These are items that you're
waiting for responses on
@Read - This is where newsletters or
articles go until you've read them

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"These top three folders are where you're
going to work from. Everything else goes
into the other folders you've created for
storage, for example client folders. And
any other emails should be deleted. You've
got to be ruthless about deleting emails.
"You ultimately want to try to change your
mindset that you're processing emails,
not checking them. It's important that
while you're processing, you're ignoring
incoming messages until the next time
you've dedicated to sorting. If something
is urgent, people will call you. Otherwise,
you shouldn't be prioritizing the most
recent items over the items you're
currently working on."
In addition to her email system, Barbara
gave some valuable guidance on general
time management.
"Productivity is not necessarily about
getting more done in the day. It's
about leaving work with a sense of
accomplishment. This will reduce workrelated stress and improve your sense of
work/life balance so you'll be in a better
space to come back to work the next
day. Stress reduces your capacity to
focus. Remaining calm about the work
you're doing will help to achieve more.
"At the end of your day, you should create
a to-do list for the next day. Highlight
the things that would make you feel
successful. Then, when you come in the
next day, the first thing you should do is
look at your to-do list, before you go into
your inbox."

33

THE IMPORTANT
THING IS TO GET
AWAY FROM
THE IDEA THAT
YOUR INBOX IS
YOUR TO-DO
LIST, BECAUSE
IT'S NOT.

Tina liked the sound of this approach
and agreed to test it out for a week.
This happened to be the same week she
was receiving a coworker's emails while
they were away on vacation, so she
would be giving the method a thorough
stress test.
"It's been working really well, actually. I
feel it's helped with some of the emails I
get from companies - memos, that sort of
thing - that would normally get lost. But
now I can find them in the @Read folder.
And the @Action and @Waiting folders
really help with organizing back and forth
exchanges.
"Clearing out your email folders gives
you this sense of achievement. At
the end of the day you can walk away
knowing you finished all your tasks.
Then prioritizing your next morning,
knowing you need to get to these clients
because they left a message that day,
really helps prioritize.
"I actually do think I'll be using this
system going forward. Any little bit of
advice we can get with our day-in and
day-out is fantastic and this is useful.
It's helped quite a bit."

FEBRUARY
APRIL 2019
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The Ontario Broker - April 2019

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