Manage Your Emails So They Don’t Manage You

Domain: Personal Effectiveness - Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Many of us allow our anxiety around immediate responses and “inbox zero” to drive our productivity. This means that we are putting other people’s priorities ahead of our own. To put it another way, your top priorities do not include managing your inbox or responding to emails.

Most of us were never taught how to manage emails effectively. When we start a new job we simply sign-in and slowly start increasing the number of daily emails as we become more engaged in our roles. Before you know it, you are getting hundreds of emails a day with no strategy on how to manage that volume.

When your inbox reaches these volumes, catching-up seems daunting and many professionals find themselves re-reading emails they’ve already seen because they’ve been too overwhelmed to take action or disposition that message previously.

Is this hitting home? If so, the good news is this problem is really easy to fix. By establishing some basic systems and guidelines, you’ll find yourself more effective and less stressed….

No to zero

It is easy to get to “inbox zero” with the strategies we’ll cover today. The problem is that inbox zero only lasts until someone sends you your next email…and you can’t control when someone emails you. We obsess with maintaining inbox zero, which is what keeps us from focusing on more important tasks. Instead of managing emails throughout your entire day…

Designated email time

Schedule 30-minute blocks each day which you will dedicate to processing (not necessarily addressing) emails. I recommend starting with three 30-minute blocks each day. Eventually, you may be able to get down to two or even just one block a day.

If you need help resisting temptation, consider turning off pop-up email notifications or even switching to offline mode when you’re not in your designated email blocks. Since you’re not fully addressing each email during these blocks, the next strategy is to…

Find a productivity system

This is critical to not only managing your emails but for also becoming effective at managing all priorities. We’ll explore this topic in a separate newsletter but for now we just need to think about a system that will allow us to quickly disposition emails for future action (or non-action).

I personally find David Allen’s Getting Things Done system to be extremely effective. The concept (for the sake of email) is that you quickly glance at each email. If you can fully address it in under 2 minutes, do it then. If it requires additional thought or work you file the email and add the necessary actions to a type of to-do list. This system ensure that actions required from the emails you received are appropriately prioritized against all of your other competing demands.

Use folders

Because you are simply processing (and not working or fully addressing) emails, you will need to establish folder structures for filing informational emails as well as emails requiring further action at a later date.

This folder structure will depend on the type of productivity system you are using as well as your personal preferences. I personally have a “Next Action” folder where I move all my emails requiring future action. As I’m working through my “to-do” list, I can quickly access that folder to find the email with supplemental references or information.

Be smart about clean-up

These strategies make it easy to maintain inbox levels and even help with catching-up after a vacation. But what about those who have not historically been managing email effectively and are buried in hundreds (read thousands) of emails? There are specific things you can do to help make your initial clean-up less painful. First, consider prioritizing urgent messages and emails from your manager. Also, sort your inbox by conversation to read though back-and-forth chains more efficiently.

It’s a practice

Like meditation, effective email management is an ongoing practice. There are times where I find myself dropping this habit a bit by leaving things in my inbox or reviewing emails between the dedicated blocks of time. This usually doesn’t last more than a day or two and being comfortable enough with this system makes a quick catch-up easy in one 30-minute block.