Increase Your Legal Nurse Consulting Productivity with These 6 Email Management Tips
Email can inspire Certified Legal Nurse Consultants to greatness, or it can ruin your day by overwhelming you and dragging you into territory best left for after you’ve had a strong cup of coffee.
Email continues to be the important media for communication in business. While an attorney might text you that he’s running 30 minutes late for your appointment, email is still the perfect tool for maintaining a thread of important communications about specific medical-related cases you’re consulting on.
When you open an email from an attorney-client or prospect, you will be most productive if you thoroughly absorb the communication and plan a thoughtful response. When and how often you read the same email and plan your response is totally within your control. Use these 6 tips for managing email to increase your legal nurse consulting productivity.
Check email first thing in the morning to plan your day. If an attorney needs a case screened by 5:00pm, you don’t want to learn about that fact at 12:00 noon. But only check email if you have time to give it your full attention. You don’t want to dash off to yoga or an interview to introduce your legal nurse consultant services to an attorney allowing the email message to interfere with your asana or interview effectiveness. Nor do you want to dash off a rushed and uninformed answer. You want to take the time to respond thoughtfully.
Check email at scheduled times throughout the day. You might think that as president of LegalNurse.com I’m always connected to email, but I’m not. Okay – I confess I’ve had my butt kicked by email, but I’ve learned my lesson. There’s no prize for being the fastest email responder and no gain for sitting around waiting for an email to drop out of cyberspace.
Don’t check email while driving or sitting at traffic lights. Distracted driving is bad enough without your mind racing over all over the place composing answers to questions and challenges great and small. Plus there’s the urge to respond immediately, which puts you at risk for distracted, dangerous and potentially illegal driving. Not to mention your response will probably be incomplete or incomprehensible.
Touch an email once and only once. I know people who read all their emails and then go back and read each one again to respond. Every time you touch the same email you’re losing valuable time for important legal nurse projects. Touch an email once and draft one well-thought out response. If that’s not feasible, wait to check email when you have the time to respond.
Do check email on your mobile device. When traveling for the legal nurse consultant Certification Program I can usually answer all my email before the plane hits the gate or at least by the time I’ve picked up my luggage at baggage claim. Mobile devices are great for handling email when waiting at the airport, doctor’s office, hair salon, etc. But, if you’re in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles and jump right into a response when you should be at your computer researching an issue, your email response will be perceived as hasty and incongruent with your image as a professional legal nurse consultant. And your driver’s license photo won’t turn out very good either.
Don’t check email right before you go to bed. There are enough issues with computer displays disrupting your sleep patterns, so you sure don’t want to check email right before you go to bed or after you’ve relaxed with that glass of healthy red wine. You risk losing precious sleep while responding, drafting responses or mentally developing responses all for someone who probably went to bed right after clicking the “send” button that ruined your evening. Set an email cut-off time and stick to it. Don’t go to bed worrying about a problem or focused on tomorrow’s To Do’s. The last thing you need for your legal nurse consulting productivity is feeling trashed in the morning because you didn’t shut your email down the prior evening.
Email is essential to your CLNC® business. Follow these 6 email management tips and you’ll be back on your way to email sanity and improved legal nurse consulting productivity. Take it from me, these tips aren’t for those with weak willpower, but they are for those of us who want (or need) to keep our sanity.
Success Is Yours!
P.S.Comment and share your favorite email management tips for increasing your legal nurse consulting productivity.
LegalNurse.com is accredited as a provider of nursing continuing professional development by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation.
The National Alliance of Certified Legal Nurse Consultants (NACLNC®) is the largest and oldest association of legal nurse consultants.
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*The opinions and statements made by Vickie Milazzo, the founder of Medical-Legal Consulting Institute, Inc. are based on her experiences and expertise, should not be applied beyond the specific context provided, and do not guaranty or project actual results. Vickie Milazzo is no longer involved in the operations or management of the business, but is involved as an independent education consultant.
