“I’m so busy”
Work is busy, life is busy, we’re all busy. It’s easy to complain about how busy we all are, but dare I say, it’s dumb, and often bologna. Or rather, it’s an excuse for justifying our feeling of being overwhelmed at work. That’s not to say no one is busy, because there are loads of exceptions to this sentiment — I’m largely referring to the office worker who sits (or stands) in front of a computer most of the day and is so “busy” with a million emails and endless meetings.
Being busy is not the same as being productive. Not by a long shot. In fact, I’d argue it’s often the opposite. But somehow talking about how busy we all are has picked up bragging rights at some point, and we now tend to throw it around like a badge of honor.
I’ve certainly been there — so overwhelmed with the onslaught of never-ending emails that I don’t even know where to start. I read a few, but realize I can’t respond yet, so I mark them unread (thinking to myself, “I can’t deal with this right now…I’ll come back to it later”), I then try to cherry pick other emails to get rid of, and I still somehow have >100 unread emails left to get through. Sound familiar? This is a busy day, but it certainly isn’t a productive one.
A common culprit for a lot of our workplace stress and the general feeling of drowning at work is often related to email (there are lots of other factors to discuss in the future, but let’s focus on email for now).
Your workflow is unique.
There are tons of productivity related articles that all discuss different strategies for dealing with email or propose “life-hacks” for increasing workplace productivity (like this one or this one). Some of them provide great ideas to help manage your inbox more efficiently, and a lot of them promote new workflows for you to adopt (Inbox Zero, designating specific times to check email, etc).
While a lot of these suggestions are great and can indeed help increase productivity, there’s an upfront investment you need to make in order to get any value out of significant changes you make to your workflow. These changes in behavior often present steep learning curves for people who aren’t already self-aware about their workflow and enthusiastic about trying new techniques. As a result, they frequently end up creating new distractions for us instead of opportunities to work more efficiently.
One important theme a lot of productivity tools ignore is that everyone’s workflow is unique. No single methodology, technique, life-hack, or app provides the right solution to solve everyone’s productivity challenges since we all work and think differently.
Enter MailCoach.
As a first step toward rescuing people from email, Dylan Sather and I are building MailCoach. You can think of it like a personal assistant who’s constantly protecting the sanctity of your inbox, and only allowing the important emails to get in. MailCoach is kind of like the forcefield that protects the alien ships in Independence Day, where your inbox is the alien ship and the missiles are unimportant emails:
MailCoach analyzes your inbox and presents basic info about how you use email (for example, do you actually know how many emails you get on a daily basis or how many of them aren’t important?). MailCoach then highlights specific emails, senders, and threads that shouldn’t ever be making their way into your inbox. Best of all, MailCoach automatically prevents them from ever clogging up your inbox again (with your approval of course).
The beauty of MailCoach is that there is no disruption to your existing workflow and no learning curve to get started.
We don’t think email is the enemy. But we do think that every second you spend in email should be time well spent. By looking at the number of emails you get and comparing it to the emails you actually should be getting based on your email and reading habits, we’re able to take a targeted machete to your inbox. The scalpel comes next.
MailCoach has a simple goal: help people spend less time in email and more time doing things that matter.
A bit about us.
During our time at BrightRoll together, Dylan Sather and I designed and led two different week-long productivity seminars, where we encouraged our coworkers to use their tools and their time more efficiently. We discussed how to spend less time in email (hint: filters and keyboard shortcuts go a long way), ran through tips for using your computer more efficiently, and presented best practices to run better meetings (and more importantly, how to avoid the unnecessary ones). Our seminars got great feedback across the company, and most importantly, we increased people’s ability to be self-reflective about their own workflow.
The union of technology and productivity has been a passion of mine for a long time, and Dylan is one of the smartest (not to mention productive) people I know — I can’t imagine a better person with whom to start a company.
We’re currently working with a small group of users to help test MailCoach and gather feedback on what people like, what’s working, and what’s missing that they want to see in future versions.
We can’t wait to release it to the world, and we’re excited to keep building tools that help you get more stuff done.
Check it out for yourself.
Visit the MailCoach website to sign up, learn more, and join the beta program.
We’d also love to hear your feedback on what you struggle with in the workplace — are meetings ruining your life? Do you think apps like Slack help or hurt productivity? Drop me a note at danny@mailcoachapp.com.
Follow us on Twitter and check us out on Facebook while you’re at it!
