Like it or lump it, email is a part of life for those of us in ministry, and we need to know how to master it before it masters us. How many of us feel overwhelmed by the number of emails in our inbox and have no strategy for dealing with them? How much time do we waste opening, closing, drafting, reading, sending and archiving emails? We’ve got better things to do with our time! Email is a tool that can be used very effectively for ministry – you just need to know how.

Here are my five top tips for being the master of your email:

• Respond quickly. If I can answer an email straight away I will, and then I’ll delete it.
• Don’t read twice. How much time do you spend opening an email, deciding it’s too hard to answer now, then opening it again later (perhaps multiple times) to eventually respond. What a waste of time! Don’t open an email unless you’re prepared to deal with it right then and there.
• Have a good archive system. Being able to deal with an email as soon as you open it relies on having a simple but effective method of archiving emails. The first post in the list below has some great suggestions.
• Be ruthless. Delete whatever you don’t think you’ll need again (you need to keep much less than you actually do – ask yourself – “what is the likelihood I’ll need this again?”). If you decide that you do need it, move it to a folder in your email called ‘keepers’ or ‘essential’ – you get the idea. There’s no need to create 100 folders for ‘carols’, ‘morning service’, ‘rosters’, ‘preaching’ etc. Keep it simple – email software now has a search capacity that will pick up whatever you need to find later on.
• Pick specific times of the day to deal with your email. Don’t keep it open all day – you’ll get distracted each time your hear the ‘ding’ of a new email arriving. Look at your email for half an hour at the start and end of the day, and close it down the rest of the time.

Check out these four articles for great advice on staying on top of your email:

• How to get your email inbox to zero every day (from What’s Best Next)
• 10 steps to becoming an email ninja (from The Blog of Tim Ferriss)
• Top 10 email productivity boosters (from Lifehacker)
• Email zen – clear out your inbox (from Zen Habits)

If you’ve got tips for how to stay on top of your email, I’d love to hear from you. You can add a comment below.