Acronym

This Small Staff Week post is from Caryl Garais Tynan, director of membership services at the American College of Phlebology.

Small staff associations struggle with a huge list of duties, juggling multiple hats with limited resources, and time. Recently, I attended a time-mangement class, and they had great motivators and ideas, but one idea that stuck with me was an email management tool called RAFT.

The instructor said that we should strive to have clean in-boxes and regardless of how you manage your tasks with flags or by printing out emails, this principle can help you quickly get through to the core of your email/file system.

As many of you know, we hear many great ideas, but how many of them do we truly implement. My email intake is very large, so I decided to give it a shot.

RAFT stands for Refer, Action, File, or Throw away. The principle is to apply these four categories to each email and each piece of paper that hits your desk. It is simple, easy to implement, and, even though a messy desk is a sign of genius, this can change your work life. When I read email, I can refer it, which means to forward (or print and forward) then delete it. Emails that require action can be flagged (with a color) or printed for a to-do or action pile. When the action item is complete, it is either thrown away/deleted or filed for history. Emails that need to be saved for archive/history can be filed accordingly. Emails that are just simple responses or do not require referral, action or filing can be thrown away/deleted. This leaves your inbox virtually empty except for action items that are flagged.

I never thought it could happen, but my desk and email has reached a new organization level. Staff thought I was quitting because of the lack of paper on my desk. That made me chuckle.... keeps people on their toes. There are moments when I lax on the RAFT method, but quickly realize that I have to get back on track to keep my efficiency at a high level. This was just a 5 minute portion of the day-long, time-management presentation, but it made the entire meeting worth while. It is hard to find what works for you, but when you do find it, you can't help but share the wealth!

The RAFT method is a survival technique that is integral to my organization. I hope it works for you.