Two Kinds of Email People in the World

This Business Insider story caught my eye this weekend and accurately depicts one of my favorite debates to get into with people. Are you a no notifications person or are you insane?

I am, without a doubt, the person on the left. By having a large number in red on that app, it seems to say “YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO DO RIGHT NOW WHY AREN’T YOU DOING IT.” The amount of shame that comes with that number is astounding.

I took the month of January off to travel to Hawaii and New Zealand and during this time I turned off all of the email addresses on my phone except my personal gmail at night or in the morning ya know, for emergencies. I can’t describe how amazing this felt not to see a loud red dot staring at me on my phone home screen everyday all day. Email was gone! It wasn’t hanging over my head. I was free to run my life and make my own choices.

Sadly returning to reality meant return to email. However, within 2–3 days I was completely caught up on work and personal email thanks to a few easy ways to manage it all. It takes maybe an hour to clear up even the worst of inboxes, and saves you time and headache in the future.

Anyone who says “Email is the worst,” “I just don’t want to put in that kind of time,” or “Who cares if I have 12,000 unread email?” clearly has no idea how easy it is, how little time it takes (and SAVES), and how easy it is to miss one important email in that 12,000 unread email rat’s nest.

1. Filters. I don’t know how people live without using filters. Newsletters, Social Media Notifications, Banking info, Venmo Receipts, Online Dating notifications, Meetups, Daily Deals (groupon, etc.), receipts, and even specific people (mom, boss, best friend) all get their own label. Then it’s VERY easy. Basically — anything that I don’t have to respond to, don’t need to care about for awhile, or just don’t want to see everyday, goes into a filter. Anything else in the inbox is something important. The people with their own folder get special notifications so you see them first (i.e. VIP tag on iPhone).

Filter Messages Like These → Skip the inbox → Add Tag

The best part is when you pick a newsletter or something and you can click:

“Also apply filter to 2,011 matching conversations”

and they ALL GO AWAY IMMEDIATELY. It’s like magic.

2. “Move to Slack. Jenn, just move everything and everyone onto Slack. It’s an email killer.” No. Slack is a glorified group chat. Not an email replacement. Don’t listen to people that give you this advice. They’re people that gave up. They’re quitters. In a friend group slack aimed at creating less email, my name is @jennhatesslack — if that gives you any indication. However, I would love it to replace Skype or Gchat or AIM. That makes more sense to me. Slack can be utilized if you’re finding yourself emailing the same friend group everyday, which will eliminate some volume of emails, but it just creates one more platform with more set of notifications to manage. This I have recently come around to as being something positive. Albeit begrudgingly.

Anyway — continuing on.

3. Delete. Don’t Archive. This is important for making your email actually useful for historical context. If you archive, then when you search for something, you’re going to get everything that’s ever been in your email. However, if you delete the things you don’t need (i.e. old newsletters or Twitter notifications), then when you search for someone’s name or that customer service email you needed, you’ll be presented with only things that actually matter and not a lot of junk. Yea yea, but Google gives you 15gb of space that you’ll never dream of using. That’s great. It’s not a race to fill up your free space. Just say no.

4. Batch Update. Tonight I was catching up on about 6 weeks worth of email and had 21 emails from one person. They weren’t things I needed to respond to rightaway so I let them build up a bit. I sat down, read through everything, responded to everything, and then archived them away (to his specific name tag) clearing out 21 emails all at once. He’ll probably hate me, but hey, they’re out of my inbox and now I’m at less than 100 emails total.

Ultimately some people just get ignored for a little while, even if I’ve read the email. Not everyone deserves your attention immediately, but also some things deserve to take some time to think about it and reply to later when you have a better understanding of what needs to be said. Take that time if needed. Otherwise, respond right away and clear it out. #Efficiency