Stop glorifying your inbox

I spent the whole of last Saturday clearing my email inbox (gahhhhhh!).

Tedious and laborious task, right? It raises an interesting point.

I often hear people talk how many emails they get in a day — In fact, I notice behind their complaining is a very subtle glorification — as if it’s some kind of competition that he/she with the most amount of emails is crowned the most important (I recognise the irony in this post, but bear with me).

This inbox glorification must stop!

I seriously consider dealing with vast quantities of emails in a day a complete waste of time. More importantly I believe its a symptom of a far more insidious problem. What does this say about the message you’re broadcasting to the world?

Everything you attract is a result of what you speak/write/broadcast into existence.

Now there’s an important distinction here. We spend our day operating from two different energetic spaces. There’s the vital space and then there’s the functional space. Most of us spend WAY too much time in the functional aspects of what we do and nowhere near enough time in the vital parts.

Being vital means being irreplaceable. There’s something unique about what you do, the way you do it, the way you say it, the charisma you pour over it, the leadership you bring to it.

No one else can quite do ‘it’ in the same way you can. My message is to get very clear on what ‘it’ is and start spending more time doing it.

“But what about all the other stuff that needs to get doing” I hear you cry! Outsource and delegate it. Your inbox is a low-value activity for you to do but a high-value activity for someone else i.e. your EA. You can’t scale a business and lead an organisation without a remarkable team around you — so every time you scrummage around your inbox remember you’re not only denying someone else a job but you’re stunting your business and denying yourself from achieving your true potential.

So, I’ve made it my personal mission to start being very clear and specific about the kind of inbound communications & opportunity I want to attract.

And my metric for success?

How many new emails I can get my inbox DOWN to in a day…