What to do with your FYIs

How to handle information you don't need now

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.
Good Morning, This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's tip is about what to do with those f
y eyes for your information emails or other such messages

(00:24):
people send to you. A few strategies can help you
keep the information handy without clogging up your current workflows.
In life, we all receive information that we find valuable
but can't do anything with at the moment. We received
these in our personal lives, like a recommendation for a

(00:45):
great h fact guy, but you don't need the system
service for another six months or so. People definitely receive
them at work, and you will receive more the higher
up you go in management. People send you information that
you don't need to actively respond to, but you will
wish to know, or at least you will be held

(01:05):
accountable for knowing. The temptation is to think that you
will just remember these things, but you won't. Sometimes people
create elaborate email filing systems with such f y eyes
for each different project. But again, if you never look
at these files, then the information may as well not exist.

(01:29):
But there are a few things you can do to
keep such material from slipping through your fingers. Well, that is,
if you don't want it to slip through your fingers.
Some f y I stuff isn't really useful information. If
that's the case, go ahead and delete it. It will

(01:50):
be okay. If you do decide to keep it, you
can just leave it in your inbox. I personally don't
delete f y I emails that I find interesting, nor
do I file them. Email search engines are pretty good now,
so if you know the name of the person and
the topic, your search engine will likely be able to

(02:12):
find it. Sometimes you don't even need to remember the center.
I know some people think that sounds terrible because they
want to get to inbox zero, which I personally don't
care about. But if a pristine in boxes for some
reason a point of pride for you, then you can
create an archive file with all of these f y

(02:33):
I sorts of notes. Then you need somewhere else to
nudge you to remember the information's existence when you are
going to need it. This requires one more active step,
but this step makes the process more efficient. So when

(02:54):
you receive an f y I that you actually think
is going to be useful, take your best us as
to when you are going to want to know this information.
As we talked about in a recent episode, you can
send a reminder to future you if you want to
go through that list of a dozen pumpkin patches that

(03:16):
a neighbor sent you. You can put a note to
yourself on your calendar on let's say in October Friday
of next year, with a neighbor's name and pumpkins. Ideally,
this will nudge you to search the name in the
word pumpkin and you will get to the list. Why Friday, Well,

(03:37):
this is when I do my weekly planning, so I'm
already in the mood for thinking about what I'd like
to do with my time. It is highly likely that
in October I would be interested in pumpkin options. In
July not so much. For work, f y Eyes, you
might attach some note to any upcoming meetings for that

(03:59):
team our project. So if someone sends you ideas that
are being batted around for pitching a client, the next
time that team meets, you'll see the note and you
can review the f y I as part of your
meeting preparation. If it's a note about something you'd like
to remember it let's say annual review time, you can
put a note on a weekly planning time a few

(04:21):
weeks before those reviews, so you will see it and
go looking for the information now. Of course, the more
complicated f y eyes are stuff for which there is
no obvious time. The first question is are you sure
you care? I used to say things like the names

(04:42):
of good bottles of wine. Then I realized there are
a lot of wine recommendations in this world. I'm better
off just choosing something I always buy for people and
leaving it at that. But if you think you will care,
then make what productivity guru David Allen calls a someday

(05:04):
maybe type list with a few notes about this thing.
Maybe it's the name of an excellent hotel in Paris,
and you would like to go to Paris someday, but
you know what, it probably isn't happening this year. Just
keep a running list somewhere with all this stuff, and
then make a time to review it occasionally. It really

(05:27):
doesn't need to be frequent. Most of the stuff that
goes in here won't be terribly time specific anyway, so
it could be once a month or so. Ideally, in
ten minutes or less, you could quickly scan through the
whole list. If something does leap out as being something
you'd like to actively put in your life, hopefully you

(05:49):
have enough info in that little note to go back
into your inbox or your email archive and search for it.
My guess is that a lot of the stuff in
that file won't really leap to the top, in which
case you can just cross it off or delete it
and stop worrying about it. But if it does, that

(06:10):
little extra note will nudge things back to the top
of your brain, so f y I actually becomes information
you can use in the meantime. This is Laura. Thanks
for listening, and here's to making the most of our target.

(06:34):
Hey everybody, I'd love to hear from you. You can
send me your tips, your questions, or anything else. Just
connect with me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at Before
Breakfast pod. That's b E the number four, then Breakfast
p o D. You can also shoot me an email
at Before Breakfast podcast at iHeart media dot com. That

(06:57):
Before Breakfast is spelled out with all the letters. Thanks
so much, should I look forward to staying in touch.
Before Breakfast is a production of I Heart Radio. For
more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i Heart
Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

(07:17):
favorite shows.