Managing your Inbox
There was a time when your inbox referred only to “a boxlike tray, basket, or the like, as on a desk, for holding incoming mail, messages, or work.” How efficiently you made your way through this inbox without cluttering up your desk would influence how others viewed your work. An ever increasing tower of unanswered messages and forms in your inbox or scattered across your desk would lead others to question your organization skills and reliability. Today, your inbox is more likely to be found in an Outlook account on a company desktop or laptop computer and yet the habits for managing incoming work continues to impact how others view performance and skills.
In a recent Business Insider article, Shana Lebowitz and Allana Akhtar report that “[m]anaging your inbox is an underrated workplace virtue, argues Richard Moran, CEO of consultancy Frost & Sullivan. When employees don’t respond, coworkers perceive them as unorganized and lazy.” This is of course dependant on the job and how intensively it relies on email corespondence. Indeed, Lebowitz and Akhtar go on to acknowlege that “it’s impossible to look at anyone’s inbox and say for sure that he or she is a productivity ninja or a psychopath. Your email management strategy depends heavily on your profession, for example, and the standard flow of email in your office.” Generally, it remains a good idea to handle incoming messages and work in an orderly and prompt manner, be it with the physical mail you receive or in your work inbox.
Photo: retrieved from Pixabay, available under the public domain.
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