Remember when that phrase made you smile... rather than cringe? It didn't take long for email to run amok and inundate every one of us. It's simultaneously a time saver and a time waster. Like all other waste that you control in your Lean efforts, you can control email waste as well.

An inbox with hundreds, and possibly thousands of messages is not uncommon, and all those messages waste time in a number of different ways. First, the incoming message interrupts you. Bing. You glance at the indicator to see who the message is from or go to your inbox to read it. Now that you've been side tracked, it will take you several minutes to regain your train of thought. Even if you only glance at the email indicator, you'll lose a minute or two until you get back on track. Turn off the automated new email message indicator. Set specific times to review email.

Second, countless hours are wasted by searching through emails for information. Email makes a really poor filing system. Even if you use the search feature, you waste time waiting for results to return from those countless emails you're saving.

Remember the old rule about handling a sheet of paper on your desk once? The same thinking applies to email. Is this scenario familiar? Stop what you're doing to read the email that just arrived. Now mark it as unread because you know you have to respond to it. Get back to the task you were working on before the email arrived. When you complete, you return to your inbox to respond to the email that interrupted you in the first place. You wouldn't accept that kind of wasted effort on your production line, so remove it from your personal workflow as well.