Email Sucks, it nearly cost me My Marriage
How to dominate your inbox and reclaim your time to attack the ideas that energize you
It was a Saturday, October 2006 the sun was barely peeking through my study window as I logged into an IBM Thinkpad to do work, on a Saturday. I looked at the email notification ticker beside and could feel the stress and anxiety accelerate
I had been at it for 3 hours by the time my wife had woken, had breakfast and asked when I would be finished. My response to that question received the retribution that had been well overdue, as this would be 51 straight Saturday’s replying to emails.
Armed with a freshly scolded ego, I set about researching over the next 30 minutes “how to manage email” and even that search didn’t fill me with hope, and it was filled with more steps than fire escape, filters, tags, archive, rules, subfolders… F%$#@.
I read 10’s of articles and clicked past page 1 of Google search multiple times until I stumbled across the one article which saved my marriage. I never saved that article, because I saved the core message to memory, my marriage was on the line
Q: When opening an email you have less than 5 seconds to decide one of 3 things..
- Do
- Delete
- Delegate
The 3D’s
Do: Buckle down and reply to it straight away, and if this needs more time effort and research, then get cracking!!
Delete: Remember the 5-second rule and Does this really need an explanation? You will know, and don’t be afraid to be brutal when you start, will be easier to dial back, than dial-up deleting email aggression.
Delegate: Does this require someone else to act upon, or their input to complete the requisition or action. This also could be yourself, and if this task requires more than 5 minutes of effort to complete, then schedule it, with the email in your calendar. Yes, you heard me correctly, this is not fat fingers on a keyboard, you must schedule it into your calendar
(will cover more on this scheduling into your calendar thing another time)
Within a week I was able to get some semblance of control of my inbox, I went from drowning in what appeared to be a sea of stress to being able to see the bottom of my inbox on a 14” Laptop screen.
Within a month of continued application of these rules, there were days where I would have NOTHING in my inbox, that is quite an achievement, especially considering it was done with the least amount of effort and my time, energy can be spent on the actual things that I need to get done to move my work forward or exploring new ideas which energize me.
Once you apply these 3 foundational rules to your approach to email, you will dominate your inbox and be one step closer to mastering your time management.
To round out mastering email, there are a number of small tweaks I made along the way to help me approach email in a healthy way, but also regain control of my time to achieve the goals each day I set out for myself
- Do email in short sharp 15 minute bursts. Imagine yourself being Kermit the Frog on the typewriter in that famous gif. Go hard, but only do this 3–4 times, spread across the day.
- Turning on conversation mode, and threading. You don’t want to be the person who replies to the email which has already been answered or the position has changed.
- Turn “OFF” the notification button on your phone, stop looking at it for email, you are wasting your time, because you will most likely need to go to your laptop to respond to the question or request.
- I like to do 15 minute sprints early in the day to flush the system, this goes well with a couple of glasses of water, and around 130pm post-lunch to flush out anything that has arrived since the morning, then another near end of the day
What you will find once you apply the later point, is to others your response time will now increase, so they will re-reply to that email asking for your response or will call you, SMS you because “they” need an urgent response and this is because people misuse and abuse email, it is not an instant message, chat tool. There is a reason it has “Mail” in the word
For instant message, persistent chat, this is where tools such as Slack come to be your friend, and what you will also notice is that people that do not like Slack (or these types of tools) will have an inbox that you used to have, an inbox full of unread stress and anxiety. If it’s really urgent, phone call or SMS even.
See the trend here, that’s it not the tool that is the problem, it’s the PEBCAK (Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard)
Do not be afraid to change the way you operate and reset expectations to others, remember it’s YOUR TIME that only YOU can manage.
Email is a bandaid for Broken Processes, and that’s why it has a bad wrap. It is one of the best collaboration tools on the planet, it, unfortunately, spends its time in an abusive relationship with us humans because we just don’t know how to treat them properly.
Once we treat Email with respect and kindness, we can then use Slack and other collaborations tools correctly and they also will be enjoyed and loved as they should be. As effective tools to help us humans dominate the day, and not what people perceive them as.
The 3D’s will be your friend, apply them today in those 15-minute bursts and see and feel the weight, stress and anxiety of a bloated inbox be shredded to never control you again.
People’s struggle with email will now reveal itself to you, and hopefully, you have the courage to share with them this story and these tips and we can make the world a better place, less stressful and more impactful because we are not all wasting our time on meaningless paralysis of that bloated inbox
Go forth and DOMINATE!!
Some other links you will find useful reading on this topic
- 4D Delete, Delegate, Defer, Do
