Not Letting Email Run You–Overcoming the Inbox

A few years ago, I met with an organizational expert whose advice changed my life. She gave me a bunch of tips and tricks, but only one changed the way I work: limiting how often I check my email.

Why Email Is Ruining Your Life

Let’s see if you can relate to this: you have a project that you really don’t want to do. Maybe you’re finally doing your accounting, taxes, or similar dreadful project (which, in my case, is ALL I do). After psyching yourself up for what will undoubtedly be a grueling session, you sit down and start working.

Then you get a pop up notification. On your computer, phone, whatever.

Of course you have to check it. Then you reply. Then you waste some more time looking through your feed.

Finally, you get back to work…only for another notification to mess things up.

Before you know it, you’re out of time and the project isn’t done.

Unfortunately, this is the normal of our world today. We get distracted, and it takes time to get back into that “work zone.” Up to 23 minutes according to the latest studies making their rounds.

That means that five minutes to read and craft the perfect reply to that email actually cost you nearly a half hour of good work.

How To Set It Right

In our always connected world, digital boundaries aren’t fun. Our phones are designed to get us information as quickly and efficiently as possible. That’s what we like!

But we have to shut it down.

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The Organizational Specialist I noted at the beginning told me that I should limit reading emails to twice a day. The exact times was up to me, but I found the beginning and ending of the day worked out pretty well.

For others, not checking email until having a good working sprint in the morning is the only way to keep from getting sucked into email tasks.

With all of this, I don’t mean just emails. It’s any distracting time wasters. Do you really need to look at Facebook? Turn off notifications and schedule a time you’re going to do that. Do you feel like you have to keep up with the news? Great…just keep it to a scheduled.

Now, your phone really, really doesn’t want you do stop looking at it. All the defaults are designed to get you to constantly stare at it. If you’re looking for a good guide on how to make your phone work for you, check out this article at Make Time where it discusses specific steps to turn off the bad parts of your phone.

Setting Expectations

Getting into this habit is a struggle. It’s made harder with other people’s expectation being that YOU ANSWER RIGHT NOW OR YOU MUST HATE ME!

Fighting against this can be like running into a wall over and over again.

As a personal example, let me tell you about my staff. They were all great. They would also send me an email, then instant message me or pop into my office if I hadn’t responded in 30 minutes or less.

“Have you seen my email yet?” they’d ask.

Of course not! I was focusing on something else. Once I was done with my current task, I would then give the appropriate focus on the email.

It also didn’t help that my boss was an instant emailier. And, unsurprisingly, he also wasn’t very good at managing his big projects, instead always focusing on the small email fires.

Part of setting expectations is not responding to emails except for at certain times. Most people will be okay with this. If you want to take it to the next level, one of the people in my networking group actually set up an Auto-reply saying he would ONLY check email at two set times every day.

Going One Step Further with Email

I love this article on The Atlantic for setting email expectations on vacation. His out of office tells everyone that any emails sent while he’s on vacation will be automatically deleted.

It’s genius. Rather than getting back from vacation and having to work double time to catch up, you can actually come back relaxed. If only these kinds of responses were the norm rather than the exception.

Balancing Technology Rather Than Being Subjugated by it

I’m writing this article in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis. Which means I’m going a little crazy.

As an information worker, though, it has really clarified how easy it is to stay connected to work even if we never go into the office.

That’s amazing! It also super sucks. Life is too short to always be working. And part of that is working smarter with what we have.

Not letting notifications run our life is a key step to being smarter about how we work.