A 3-Step Guide to Better Managing Your Inbox
Receiving handwritten letters in the mail is exciting! Every day without fail, the mailman drops off these “gifts” through our mail slot. The dog barks with excitement and goes on to fall back asleep.
Like my dog, my excitement is short-lived as all the mail is either junk or bills. Rarely do I receive a personal letter or postcard.
Hand Written Letters are Nostalgic!
I applaud those that still send handwritten letters and thank you notes. I believe the world would be a far better place if everyone took the time to write a letter to a loved one at least once a week.
This one act would slow us down, and force us to be more thankful and caring to our fellow man. It’s what the world needs right now!
We are unfortunately too busy to take the time to do this. Why?
“You’ve Got Mail”
In the 1990s when email exploded across homes, schools, and businesses with AOL’s patented “You’ve Got Mail”, I was just as excited about receiving email as I was about receiving letters in the mail.
It is much quicker, efficient, and free with internet service. This invention helped when my wife and I were long-distance dating…email after email, and we were able to connect instantaneously and eventually seal our commitments with starting a life together. Thank you email, we are living happily ever after!
You’ve Got “Too Much” Mail
Fast forward to today, an overloaded inbox is symbolic of the hurried world we live in. The novelty of using email as a tool to connect with loved ones has been lost.
What used to be exciting 25 years ago is now a burden and source of mental health issues. The demands of our “9 to 5” jobs and the pressure to do more while maintaining other priorities in our lives are very much real.
The mobile phone and all of its convenient alert systems have now extended our work desk to our pockets. We are now on the clock 24-7!
Fortunately, there are now more platforms being created to mitigate email and meetings for people to lose the noise and focus on their work. But email is not slowing down and it’s being abused.
The Case for Email Academy
Though email isn’t necessarily all bad due to the efficient model of communicating (the start of my own love story), the email system lacks universal training.
In high school, I believe it would be beneficial to run mandatory courses on email etiquette, email organization techniques, and email for business.
Even for parents who are digital minimalists, I believe this is an opportunity to train our children not only how to read and write, but how to be critical thinkers and communicators on our digital devices.
The Case for Digital Intelligence Trainings
As elementary as it sounds, the mandatory email training model could be beneficial as part of an organization’s onboarding. This solution would save a generation of knowledge workers, reshape organizational cultures, and may reduce burnout.
Yes, too many meetings and emails is a contributing factor to the Great Resignation.
The first organizational digital intelligence training would be for those that struggle to know how to read the room (or in between the lines). Courses would address:
- Email management for those with too little time
- Email tennis lessons for those who are easily distracted and reactive
- Email avoidance for those that struggle with FOMO
- Email decluttering for the hoarders
- Email defense techniques for the people pleasers
- Email avoidance for those who are easily triggered (conversation necessary)
For those that approve of the last recommendation, you may enjoy Cal Newport’s book, A World Without Email. His stance isn’t a full eradication of email, but it’s to get to the point of rethinking how we utilize this tool smartly.
I have to agree, but I would offer one more monetary solution!
The Case for Postage on Email
My recommendation for organizations is to start putting postage or a tax on emails that exceeds a quota. Similar to reading a limited amount of free publications on digital publication (hello WSJ and HBR!) before a prompt forces you to pay up for a subscription. Putting a charge on emails would force people to be thoughtful about the quantity, quality, and who they are cc’ing.
While going down this crazy trail, the same quota would be extended to the number of words allowed in the email. Similar to the 140-character limit for Twitter, emails would need to be in 5 sentences or limited to 250 characters. This would prevent the novels that come from some of your colleagues. Get to the point and land the plane!
Lastly, emails beyond the 9 to 5 working hours would be strictly forbidden and if the rule was broken, a higher amount would be charged. For anyone that is being abused by management or colleagues, they would receive commissions from those that were being taxed.
The Case for More Asynchronous Work
Let’s be real, charging for email will never happen, but thank you for fancying my ridiculous idea.
What works is leaning more on digital platforms that are built for collaborative work. Instant messaging, shared servers, and asynchronous work platforms (Basecamp, Asana, Notion, Trello).
These systems also have faults and can be misused and create even more distractions, but it helps reduce the complications of email overload.
Break the 6 Second Rule of Checking Your Email
A study came out a couple of years ago that gave a staggering statistic.
The average email is opened within 6 seconds of arrival into the inbox! This is on top of the fact that we check our phones nearly 350 times a day.
Newsflash, if your job description doesn’t include managing the inbox of someone else, then you are wasting hours of your day living in your inbox.
Yes, emails are important and you don’t want to miss important topics that impact your work. However, getting caught in the 6-second loop is detrimental to productivity and getting in a flow of what matters most.
Finding Your Flow
For most people, it takes an average of 23 minutes to get back into a flow of work after being distracted. Here is an excerpt of the conclusions from the University of Irvine researchers:
“Surprisingly our results show that interrupted work is performed faster. We offer an interpretation. When people are constantly interrupted, they develop a mode of working faster (and writing less) to compensate for the time they know they will lose by being interrupted. Yet working faster with interruptions has its cost: people in the interrupted conditions experienced a higher workload, more stress, higher frustration, more time pressure, and effort. So interrupted work may be done faster, but at a price. Our results suggest that interruptions lead people to change not only work rhythms but also strategies and mental states. Another possibility is that interruptions do in fact lengthen the time to perform a task but that this extra time only occurs directly after the interruption when reorienting back to the task, and it can be compensated for by a faster and more stressful working style.”
So if email is the primary culprit of distractions in the workplace, where can we start to fix it?
Don’t Go for the “Inbox Zero” Approach
I don’t think there is a one size fits all approach for inbox management because we are inherently different with unique personalities and working styles. How you talk, how you read, how you think is your perspective…the inbox is an extension of those things.
Getting to “Inbox Zero” is like catching a fish with your bare hands blindfolded. It’s impossible!
So I am a bit counter-cultural, I still believe that the inbox is your friend and a valuable tool. Here are some email tips from other time management experts;
- Keep your email to zero! (have you met my colleagues?)
- Sync emails to your project management platform (have you met my colleagues?)
- Don’t look at emails when you start work (again…have you met my colleagues?)
Yes, there are practicalities and nice mindsets to have in those recommendations, but let’s get real, billions of emails circulate this world in a 24-hour cycle and I’m sure we all feel like each one of those billions circulates through our computers!
To improve your relationship with email and not let things fall through the gaps, I would offer a 3 step approach that is similar to how you manage your mail at home.
Check Your Inbox (Mailbox) Once A Day
I highly recommend checking email in the middle of the day or after lunch with no more than an hour in your inbox. This strategy enables you to keep your morning time for deep, creative, and strategic work when you are at your optimal energy level. If you work in an organization where email is part of the daily culture of getting things done, take only 10 minutes to check the inbox in the morning to assess for emergencies. Once you commit to not being the 6-second responder, your colleagues will adapt.
Close Your Inbox (Mailbox)
Turn off the ghost email alerts and dings on your computer and phone when you are doing deep work. If you still feel like you are prone to peek at the inbox, then turn off your mail client on the computer and your Do Not Disturb on your phone. This practice works and allows more focus and productivity. Multi-tasking is a fallacy.
Systemize Your Inbox (Mailbox)
For the time that you are in your inbox, the system below is a great place to start:
- Go through and remove your junk email first
- If it’s not already set, create subfolders by client, project, or season where emails can be filed away
- Put your emails in “conversation mode” view”. VERY helpful when you are cc’ed on chains that go on and on and on and on and on…and on.
- Go through email chains under one conversation and start deleting emails from the bottom up, unless there is an attachment that you need. The goal is to get to one email that has the entire chain.
- Batch your email responses.
- Carve out time to respond to emails that need no brainpower and can be addressed in 2 minutes or less. Be intentional on 1 sentence responses.
- Flag emails that need more time than you have…these can be scheduled for your open-loop day. Color code and date with reminders if necessary.
- As mentioned above regarding an open-loop day, this is a MEETING FREE day meant for knocking out your administrative tasks or deep planning for the following week. Carve out time once a week (typically on Fridays) to do an inbox purge. To prevent backlogs, every email should be either deleted, responded to, or moved to a folder at that specific time you’re focused on it…not ongoing.
- For all your emails, keep responses to 5 sentences or less. If it requires more words, consider a short meeting, Instant Message, or using a collaboration/project management platform.
- If you can afford to delegate your email, do it so you can have even more time to focus on your craft.
Some would argue that managing an inbox is a waste of time. I couldn’t disagree more as communication management is circumstantial for various industries, organizational systems, and individual personality types.
Not having a plan for inbox management is a bigger waste of time. Freedom is what we are going after and it starts with reclaiming our time, healthy habits, and true work.
Regardless of where you fall, I would encourage intentionality in getting a hold of this communication trap and being smart with your time.