Laura’s note: This essay originally ran over at Vanderhacks, my Substack newsletter. For a free or paid subscription, you can visit here.
Everyone loves to complain about email. But it truly is a marvelous invention. I started writing news articles before email was ubiquitous, and I remember playing phone tag with people all day. Asynchronous but instantaneous communication is a game changer.
However, the key to inbox happiness is recognizing that email is a tool to do your job and to manage your life. It is seldom your actual job (or your life!). Here are some ways to keep it under control and make the experience of checking email far more positive.
1. Check less often. Popping in and out of your inbox all day is a recipe for getting nothing else done. You already know that! So I’m going to make a different argument. Checking less frequently makes email more fun. This is because a little restraint increases the chances that each check brings something good.
Here’s what I mean. Let’s say you get 50 “real” emails a day, and five of those are exciting (a note from an old friend, a compliment from your boss, an old client reaching out about new work). If you check email 50 times, you only have a one in ten chance of each check bringing one of those exciting notes. But if you check five times, the odds of getting a “good” email in each check go up substantially. Checking email becomes more like opening a birthday present than doing a chore! If you do nothing else but make this one little switch, your workdays can become a lot more enjoyable.
2. Be responsive…but focused. I know not everyone can get away with checking email every few hours. But even if you need to be very responsive, try bifurcating your time. You could work on something focused for 40 minutes, and then be in your inbox (and answering other kinds of messages too) for 20 minutes. Then go back to the focused work. What this means is that no one would ever have to wait more than 40 minutes for a response, and probably a lot less. But you wouldn’t suffer the productivity drain of multi-tasking.
3. Set a time for dealing with non-urgent stuff. I batch process emails that haven’t required a quick response every few days or so. I call this my “email triage” time. During this time, I get to current (i.e. back where I was during the last triage) and either do what the messages require or put them on my to-do list for doing at a later time. Email triaging is a good task to do during low-productivity times like mid-afternoon. Do not process non-urgent emails during your best times! You will run out of steam and not get to matters requiring focus. But do set a time, because knowing you will get to the non-urgent stuff at some point means you can give yourself permission not to worry about it the rest of the time. Goodbye inbox stress!
4. Send emails to get emails. I’ve seen lots of folks who are trying to reach Inbox Zero get stymied by the fact that when they respond to emails, people respond again. The more emails you process, the more emails you get!
We can rue that truth…or we can embrace it. If you send notes to friends, family members, and old colleagues, they are likely to write you back. Those emails are often fun to read. So if something makes you think of a person, reach out! You might also get a more regular email schedule going — reaching out once a week to an accountability partner, or something like that. It’s like having a pen pal! Remember how fun that was?
5. Send compliments. If you see something good in the world, write a note about it. If you know the person, great. But even if you don’t, that person or organization probably has an inbox. These emails often do get read, and you’ll feel warm and fuzzy talking about good things. And who knows, you might get a response! (See below.)
6. Be thoughtfully accessible. I love getting feedback from readers and podcast listeners. Some of the emails are a little strange, but so what? I respond to the vast majority of these notes because a lot of wonderful connection has come to me this way. Consider leaving yourself open to serendipity — you never know when a new opportunity will arrive in your inbox!
7. Print up the good stuff. If you receive a note from someone you mentored saying that you changed her life, don’t leave that lingering in the electronic ether. Print it up and put it in a place where you can look at it again.
8. Email yourself. I’ve found this is one of the best strategies for remembering things that you aren’t able to act on currently. Most of us have our phones with us constantly. If you’re out and about and think “I should reach out to this person” or “I need to remember to buy new pens” or anything like that, you can email yourself. Then, during your email triaging time when you are processing to current, you will see that reminder and you can act on it.
9. Start a newsletter. If you think you will ever be in a position in life where you’ll want to be sharing things with lots of people, it’s wise to start collecting email addresses from people in a more formal way, and then giving them a reason to want to open emails from you. I started a monthly newsletter in 2010 called “Just a Minute,” and it has slowly grown, address by address, to over 50,000 people. Now, if I want to let people know about a new book, or a podcast, I can email 50,000 people who are used to hearing from me. Lots of people will do entrepreneurial stints at some point in life, so best to prepare for the possibility.
10. Fill in the address last. If you’re sending anything that requires serious thought, don’t fill in the address until you are absolutely ready to hit send. That way, you won’t accidentally send something half-baked.
11. Assume your email will be forwarded. People are sloppy. It’s quite possible that if you say something snippy about John to two colleagues, and then the email chain moves on to something else, and suddenly you’re talking about a different meeting, one of your colleagues might cc John because he’s on that second project. We can all just hope John is busy and doesn’t scroll down! But don’t do this to yourself. Save the gossip for verbal communication only. Email will become much less stressful and more pleasant.