You Don’t Have to Respond to Every Email You Receive
It’s been said before that “your inbox is other people’s priority list.” And more often than not, this turns out to be true. If you have a public presence of any sort, you probably receive more email than the the average person does.
In the last year, I’ve received multiple pitches for guests posts on my first blog, The Skool of Life. I haven’t published anything on that blog since 2013. So responding to these pitches doesn’t make any sense at all. And my response is not going to make a difference in the outcome. It’s going to add more email to that person’s inbox, and more shallow work to my day.
On other occasions, I get really long emails, some of which are incredibly kind, but would take an hour to write a thoughtful response to. So if I reply, it’s usually a short and simple thank you.
“Remember that your unread message count is not an audit of your productivity. Although it can be satisfying in the short term, attaining inbox zero is cold comfort in the long term. If you want to make time to accomplish meaningful work, you have let go of the notion of an empty inbox.” — Jocelyn K. Glei
Contrary, to popular belief, you don’t have to respond to every email you receive.
1. Use an Autoresponder
Now that I’m in the middle of writing a second manuscript I’ve gone out of my way to setup an auto-responder. It lets people know that I’m simply not able to respond to every email I get because I’m prioritizing deep work and focused on my book.
2. Have more than one Email Address
If you have one email address for all of your communications and newsletters subscriptions, it should come as no surprise that you have a shitload of email in your inbox. Here are a few ways to handle this.
- Use a service like Unroll.me which allow you to automatically unsubscribe
- Set up a secondary email address that you use to sign up for things. That way your inbox isn’t getting hammered with non-essentials.
3. Realize Not All Emails are Created Equal
Compare the pitch for a guest post with a person trying to hire me for a speaking engagement. Obviously, I’m going to be much more inclined to respond to the latter. You might remember The Dan Kennedy filtering system I mentioned in my post about saying no to everything that’s not aligned with your essential priorities:
- Is this person trying to give me money?
- Is this person trying to get me to do something?
H/T Jocelyn Glei for this nugget
If you’re serious about conquering email, I highly recommend Jocelyn’s new book. Unsubscribe: How to Kill Email Anxiety, Avoid Distractions and Get Real Work Done And if you want to hear more about what she has to say about it, be sure to listen to my conversation with her on The Unmistakable Creative.
If the fate of the free world or the future of humanity depends on your being able to get in touch with me, you probably have my phone number. If World War 3 starts, I’m sure the bombs going off outside my window will let me know. So if I haven’t responded to an email you sent, now you know why.
Before You Go…
If doing the best work of your life is important to you, you’ll love my free guide: “Optimizing Productivity & Creativity.”
The tactics I’ve packed into this guide allowed me to write over 1 million words in the last 2 years. What could it do for your life’s work? Don’t miss it.
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