Email is like traffic
There’s less of it on Sundays and during vacations, but otherwise, unless you’re in a remote cabin on a mountain top with no reception, there’s lots of it.
One option is to accept that this is what it is — hey, look at all these other guys, they’re all stuck here!, keep at it, mostly hating it, at times getting angry or overwhelmed, or both, waiting for that magical time when all lights are green (and you’ll finally get to “inbox 0”).
Or, you can accept that inbox 0 is not a realistic goal (all those people will continue to commute for the foreseeable future), and that it’s up to you to seek alternatives: different routes, different times and a different perspective on email, so that it becomes less of a stress factor.
So what is it about email that stresses? First, it’s sheer quantity. Then, it keeps coming. Even more, there’s the expectation that once you received an email, you’re supposed to do the thing that’s being asked of you. And, of course, FOMO (fear of missing out: maybe an email from your biggest client, landing you the project of your life, or an email from your boss announcing an upcoming internal meeting on the most exciting of topics or a funny cat video …).
Let’s take them one by one:
Quantity: Yes, there’s more and more email every day. It replaces other forms of communication (hey, sometimes even you prefer to send an email instead of picking up the phone!) and it is also, still, one of the most, if not the most, effective mediums of communication marketers use.
For each of us, broadly speaking, there are two categories of emails: the irrelevant ones and the relevant ones.
A high percentage of the emails we get are irrelevant — newsletters from products or services we subscribed to ages ago and are no longer (or have never been?) useful or interesting. Some email services such as gmail started to tackle the issue by automatically sorting “promotions”, “social” etc. but their algorithms are not flawless yet and the functionality for mobile is quasi not existent. So an option may be to just go bold and unsubscribe. It may take just a bit more effort than “delete”, but it is worth it. If unsubscribe feels a bit brutal, most providers allow you to change email preferences — receive updates daily, weekly, decide which updates to receive etc. Or how about moving your subscriptions to a dedicated email account: myuselesssubscriptionsthatidontevenread@myemail.com (and that account might just become procrastination-time-heaven!).
For news and RSS feeds there are much better alternatives to email — services such as Flipboard mix news on topics of choice with beautiful design and social feeds and provide a better experience than news on email.
Now the relevant emails: I keep separate accounts for the different projects I work on. This has two upsides: there’s less volume and more relevant information in each of these accounts. Plus: archiving. I often resolve that once I’ve dealt with an email, I’ll immediately archive it. I actually do this much more rarely than I’d hope, so what I do is I use the most unproductive times of a day/week for archiving emails: bonus: an unexpected jolt of satisfaction of getting something done in an otherwise placid time!
It keeps coming: there’s not much you can do about this. The only thing you can actually control is receiving email.
There are two things that work for me: I don’t check email first thing in the morning. And this, thanks to one of my favourite wise men, is because I realized that it’s more important that I first do, say, write, think, make something myself before I see what others have to say. This has been a great insight and for me, it really works.
The other thing, when I work on something that requires concentration, I shut off email, at least for one hour intervals (different time slots work for different people). And this leads to: uninterrupted concentration to the thing I’ve resolved to be important and, in fact, more time to really read (not just skim through) emails and to give more thoughtful replies.
Expectation to respond:
The thing is, what is expected of us is much more under our control than we think. We may have actually helped create those expectations of us that we now find unrealistic or stressful to meet. If I always respond to an email within five minutes of receipt, then of course it’s reasonable that you expect that I’d do the same for the next email you send me. Of course, there are cases when this is useful and appreciated: business law, M&A, finance. But even here, it may not always be the case. Not all projects have the same level of urgency or the same pace. Think about it.
And then, of course, if it’s really that important, they call. If I am that important to someone that they cannot do without my immediate attention and action, they surely also have my mobile number!
FOMO: our need for digital social interaction, including email, is, in some ways and simplistically put, just like another craving: it’s about novelty seeking and dopamine–fuelled rewards. So the same willpower tactics that help us stay away from raspberry cheesecakes can be used to stay in control of our email checking hunger.
The norms and cultural expectations about dealing with email are being defined by us, continuously. So let’s make them so that they’re less constraining and less stressful. Let’s use email for what it is: a tool, within our control.
Next time you’ll stop at a red light: will you be checking email?
Great further reads:
