Tips for organising your inbox

Between your inbox and your Executive's, you probably deal with hundreds of emails every day. Finding a way to organise your inbox is crucial for ensuring you can find key information when you need it and staying on top of new developments. Here are three ways to manage your inbox.

1. Make organising your inbox a task in itself

Accept that your inbox needs regular management. Schedule some time once or twice a day to run through all the emails you've received so far and ensure they'll properly filed, flagged and forwarded.

2. Set time to deal with requests sent via email

As well as organising your inbox, set time to carry out any tasks you've been asked to do. Often emails contain quick requests like saving a copy of some notes to a particular folder. Try doing these little jobs at the same time to minimise disruption to your bigger projects.

3. Don't check your email constantly

Glancing at an email as it comes in and returning to what you were doing is one easy way to lose track of what emails you've scanned, ignored and forgotten about. Stick to checking your emails once every hour or so, between more important tasks. Perhaps align it with the time you spend doing points one and two above.

How to work effectively when you're out of the office

You may follow your Executive to events around the country or even travel with them overseas. While it's great to be fully involved in what your Executive does, if you need to stay connected to what's happening back at the office it can be frustrating if you can't login to your emails or check your to-do list because of access problems.

To avoid encountering these issues when you're really under pressure, try working from home, or even spending an hour or two in the coffee shop downstairs well before you have to go away. See how well your emails work on your phone, your home laptop or on your tablet. Is there any software you use everyday that you can't load on a particular device or that you don't know the account details for?

This way, you can work with your IT department or other colleagues to make improve procedures ahead of time. You may even discover a different way of working.

Staying healthy with a busy work life

Whether you love or loathe the gym, finding time to get enough exercise is tricky with a busy job. How can you make exercise a permanent fixture?

• Commit to a time - Actions become habits if you make them part of the routine. Decide when you have the most time and then plan every day around your work out, rather than the other way around.

• Find something you can do anywhere - If you travel a lot, make use of online exercise videos. Find one you like and bookmark it so you can load it quickly. Alternatively, pick an exercise you can do anywhere, like running.

• Make a date with a friend - If you don't go, you've both missed out on some healthy exercise and a chance to catch up. This should make you question your decision to skip your work out.

• Exercise at work - Take the stairs instead of the lift, deliver messages in person to increase your step count or carry a box of printer paper to your office yourself instead of asking someone else.

Making sure visitors get a great first impression

First impressions count, and that includes the reception your visitors get when they arrive at your office. Here are five ways to create a great first impression.

1. Keep your reception tidy: Clear away empty coffee cups as soon as visitors leave, wipe up any spills and reorganise the chairs to show you're ready for your next guests.

2. Do the paperwork elsewhere: Some jobs require a number of documents. However, having paper spread all over the desk makes you look disorganised. When these sorts of tasks need doing, move away from the main reception.

3. Notify your reception team when visitors are due: Knowing who should be arriving when allows your front of house team to greet visitors by name and alert the right member of staff to their arrival. This creates a welcoming and organised impression.

4. Have refreshments on hand: Your guests may have had a long journey, so make sure you can bring them a coffee before they get whisked off to their next meeting.

5. Train your team: Make sure everyone knows how to greet a visitor and where they should sign in. Even if guests end up in the wrong place, they'll still get a warm reception and be quickly redirected. This speaks volumes about the kind of people they'll be dealing with at your organisation.

How does emotional intelligence help you at work

Emotional intelligence is about being aware of and managing your and other people's feelings and reactions. There are five common traits found in emotionally intelligent people.

1. Self awareness - Understanding their own strengths, weaknesses and triggers, emotionally intelligent people find ways of working which suit their personality and minimise unnecessary stress.

2. Self regulation - Emotionally intelligent people are also able to self manage their feelings. When things do get difficult, they regulate their reactions to approach problems calmly and sensitively.

3. Motivation - Another sign of emotional intelligence is bringing passion and enthusiasm into their work and team while aiming for the best results.

4. Empathy - Being able to understand and actively other people's emotions when making decisions is another trait.

5. Social skills - Emotionally intelligent people build good relationships with colleagues by having the necessary social skills to connect.

As an EA, you never know what you'll get involved in or who you'll have to work with. Bringing emotional intelligence into the workplace can really help you reduce stress and build important relationships. Thankfully, emotional intelligence is something we can all learn by paying attention to our reactions. When you're aware of how your feelings change, you can think about what caused your reaction and how to adjust your working practices going forward. Over time this becomes automatic, and we become more adept at identifying emotions in other people too.

Upping your project management game

If your Executive is involved in large or long-term projects, you might be expected to help out with some of the administration involved. While managing a large project can seem complex, there some simple tricks to help you stay on top.

1. Make a plan

When you first get involved in a project, look ahead to understand what's involved from start to finish. While you don't need a detailed step-by-step plan from day one, it helps to know what's coming up so you can ensure the right people are involved when they need to be, or that you've done the appropriate research before you're called on to present it.

2. Schedule regular check-ins

When lots of people are involved, email chains can quickly get out of hand. Instead, schedule regular check-ins with the key people and suggest that when non-urgent questions crop up, they wait until the team meeting. This saves disrupting colleagues when they're trying to focus on something else, and keeps everyone up to speed.

3. Learn to prioritise tasks

Big projects often come with huge task lists which seem daunting to begin with. However, by working out which tasks need doing first, you can get time sensitive tasks out of the way and reduce your stress levels at the same time.