#Thoughts of the Day – How to manage Repetitive tasks and Organize Emails

Photo by Tapio Haaja on Unsplash

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Thoughts of the Day

Woke up at around six today and went for a six-kilometer run before heading to the city for training. Took the tram and encountered ticket inspectors, luckily there was enough money on my card. Having a buffer really reduces a lot of trouble. While feeling fortunate about that, I realized that I forgot to bring my training book. Life can’t avoid small mistakes, hopefully, I can borrow the book later.

What I was thinking during the run

Running in circles repeatedly allows me to focus on my pace, breathing, strength, and points of exertion… Each lap is more stable and faster than the previous one, that’s the process of progress.

It’s the same in work. Doing repetitive tasks every month requires focus on how to do better each time and what can be improved next time. The more it repeats, the more areas for improvement I can find.

Work Diary

Finally managed to organize and clean up the over 400 emails in my inbox.

Ideas:

• Step one, categorize them according to my main responsibilities and match them with my personal work dossier.
• Step two, process them in blocks of time.
• Step three, use quick reply templates.

Implementation: Categorizing according to my main responsibilities

First, set up categories based on the common main responsibilities of my position, and organize my personal work dossier in the same way.

Sort all emails based on whether or not I need to take action. If not needed, archive them in folders based on the subject. If needed, leave them in the inbox and categorize them according to the relevant responsibilities.

This approach aims to:

1. Ensure that I focus on matters within my scope of responsibilities.
2. When processing them in blocks of time, handle tasks of the same type together.
3. Facilitate the extraction and summarization of insights, processes, plans, and methodologies from handling tasks.
4. Make it easier to organize the knowledge gained from work into my personal work dossier for future reference, citation, and reflection.