Take back your life with 4D's

This system has been over 20 years in development, and has evolved tremendously during this time

In addition to many other techniques (like establishing trends on how you want people to communicate with you. Email, phone, knock on your door... etc) The section deals with handling the huge amount of mail that people get in the corporate world

If you think of how many collection bins you have for information, You will be amazed. You have your Email, you get items through phone, then the regular mail, managers you meet in the hallway and assign work items to you. Then Voice mail. SMS 2 or 3 home emails. Maybe also a blog, It's not uncommon for people to have over 20 different "collection bins" that result in a huge amount of information that needs to be assimilated and action taken depending on the content.

The Four D's are as follows, when you get an Email:

1. Delete it
2. Do it (if it takes you 2 minutes or less)
3. Delegate it (to your assistant, other team member, your employee ...etc)
4. Defer it (that is, get back to it later on)

1) Delete it:

According to the training. More than 50% of all the mails you get are informational and the information is stored somewhere else. Or doesn't mean anything that is it doesn't assist you to be more efficient and successful in your job. Therefore deleting it has no business impact

2) Do it:

If you can't delete it, think about the content, and answer 2 important questions. (a) What action is needed regarding this mail? and (b) Then ask yourself can you do it in 2 minutes or less?. If you can then don't wait, "Do it" immediately and get it off your plate. The system shows that around 30% of all your mail can be taken care of in 2 minutes or less. That's huge.

3) Delegate it:

If you find that deleting it is not an option. And the next action you need to take is more than 2 minutes. Ask yourself if you can delegate it (that is, can someone else do the job to your satisfaction?) Again the system statistics show that around 10% of all mail can be delegated successfully and this would help you get back valuable time to help you be more efficient at your job.

4) Defer it:

Chances are, the remaining 10% of you mail you can't Delete, Do or Delegate. Therefore you need to schedule time to do it. Or you need to think of the next action you need to take. Maybe this next action requires you to do 40 or 50 hours of research. This means You will need to Defer it. You will need to convert it into a Task (You can do this in Outlook) and Later on break that task into action items. Which you do one by one top to bottom. Don't cherry pick. Start with the highest priority items first. Get them out of the way, then continue with the list of action items one by one till your done with the task.

Remember that you will need to allocate time based on your schedule. If every task you get you organize in this way, you will be able to negotiate better deadlines with your management. You also will have the ability to say, "Yes, And this means......." and discuss what might be affected by accepting that task. Like jeopordizing other deadlines.

Being organized is a personal decision. Its up to you to define how to spend your time. But the fact of the matter in the business world. The more organized you are. The more you get done and the more work-life-balance you will have. You'll be meeting or exceeding all your goals without sacrificing personal time, Time with the family, time you need to work on your personal career development and personal enhancements

Take back your life, and start using the 4 D's. I know I am going to do every effort to stick to them and see how things turn out for the next year