10 Ways to Conquer Your Email Inbox

We all know that email is supposed to help us be more efficient and effective communicators. But it stresses many of us out, right? Read on for a list of 10 things you can do RIGHT NOW to successfully conquer your email inbox!

First, know that you’re certainly not alone in your quest to overcome your email stress. There are at least three psychological forces that explain this common phenomenon, according to Jocelyn K. Glei, author of “UNSUBSCRIBE: How to kill email anxiety, avoid distractions, and get real work done”:

1.   THE COMPLETION BIAS – Many of us get a thrill out of checking things off our to-do list. Whether it’s sending out an email or reaching inbox-zero, getting things done gives us a sense of completion. That’s what one of my favourite behavioral economists, Dan Ariely, the author of “Predictably Irrational” was referring to when he said that removing emails from your inbox is just procrastination. It gives a false sense of accomplishment while putting off the real work that needs to be done.

2.   EMAIL PROVIDES A VARIABLE REWARD SCHEDULE. It’s like a slot machine - or gambling. We never know when important news might arrive. So we constantly check! (I feel like there might be some FOMO going on here too!) According to research, people spend an average of 2? hours a day on personal email and over 3 hours on work email. That’s CRAZY!

3.   WE FEEL SOCIALLY INDEBTED.  Also known as Reciprocity. When we receive an email, we feel compelled to respond - and if we don’t respond, we feel guilty. I know I’m guilty of that!

Does any of this sound like you?

In this article, you’ll learn tactics and strategies to help you conquer your email inbox. At the end, there's a concise list of ten things you can choose from to help us achieve two goals:

1.  reduce your email anxiety and

2.  increase your productivity

First - let’s back up. Do you remember life before email? I guess that depends on how old you are.  The first real email system was developed in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson. He also pioneered using the at “@” symbol. What a legacy, right? Safe to say he did change the world. Since then, email has evolved from:

• something that a few nerdy folks were using in universities;
• to a communication tool in some big companies;
• to a cute reference in Hollywood. That was 20 years ago. Do you remember that movie – starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks?

Nowadays it’s difficult to imagine life before email, isn’t it? And for many of us, our email box is a source of stress and anxiety.

Based on my research, plus input I received from Talk About Talk listeners, I created this definition of the role of email plus 10 things we can do RIGHT NOW to successfully conquer our email inbox:

Let's go through it now, starting with our understanding of the role of email.

Re-Defining the Role of Email

I first considered this change in mindset regarding email over a year ago when I listened to a Tim Ferriss podcast episode where he interviews Drew Houston, the CEO of Dropbox. Drew has an interesting take on email. He says that most of the email we receive is OPP. What’s OPP? It’s “Other People’s Problems” (or - Other People’s Priorities). He said he realized that triaging our way through our inbox is actually checking off other people’s TO DO list. Hmm. And furthermore, “doing email is reactive.”

That REALLY got me thinking. 

One of the Talk About Talk listeners sent in some suggestions for how to conquer our email inbox. Amongst other things, she said that email is NOT an “always on” technology. 

Brilliant!

This summer, there was an interesting article in The NewYorker entitled, “Was Email a Mistake?”

I would suggest that email itself is not the mistake; email is not the issue. The issue is how we define its role.

How about changing the role of email in our lives?

• Email is not something to check off of our to-do list. Doing email is not an accomplishment. 
• Email is something that we can use to get the real work done. Email is a tool.

It might take some time for that to sink in. While you're considering the role of email, here are ten things you can do to conquer your email inbox. They are split into "Behavioral Changes" and "Tech Hacks."

BEHAVIORAL CHANGES

1.)       Batch Your Email Time & Turn off Notifications

Research indicates that 82% of US workers check their work email at least every few hours outside of normal work hours (Statista) and 90% of US workers check their personal email at least every few hours during normal work hours (Statista)  WOW.

Can you imagine the increase in productivity if we went from checking email every few hours to doing it all in pre-specified blocks of time?

I call this one “Batch your email time and turn off notifications,” because they really are the same thing. Why would you have notifications turned on if you are batching? Turn off those email notifications, people!

Personally, I’ve started doing this, batching my email time, and I feel like it is one of the most effective things you can do to tackle your inbox. (The same thing goes for social media, BTW!)

I have to add one caveat here. This suggestion of batching emails isn’t for everyone, depending on the pace and expectations of your work environment. If your boss or your client demand immediate responses, then that’s what you have to do.

That said, I challenge you to try. Turn off your notifications and schedule in a block of time to do email. Then at last you’ll be more conscious of the time you spend on email, as opposed to being a thing you do mindlessly. Try closing your email and notifications, except for the times when you’re scheduled to focus on it.

2.    Be Disciplined with Your SENT Email

 We don’t want to add fuel to this email fire! Think of it this way:

"Email is like karma. 

You get what you give."

Here are 3 simple ways to optimize your sent mail:

• Make it short & get to the point upfront in your email. If all we reduce our verbiage by 50%, can you imagine the impact? And it is contagious – others will follow. Humans adapt their words and their communication styles to conform to their ingroups. You might consider joining the 5 sentences movement. Challenge yourself to never write more than  five-sentences reply in your emails. Anything beyond five sentences is a phone call or in-person meeting. One caveat here: don’t make the email so short that people think you are being “short” with them – that’s just rude. Be polite. But be concise.

• Customize the title to be more specific and action oriented. Customizing your email title will help the receiver focus quickly on the subject matter AND it might also help you find the email later in your sent mail folder, in case you need to find it. The email title could be anything from “not urgent – just checking in” to “Response Required: approval of documents please”. Personally, I do this when I’m booking Talk About Talk interviewees. So for example, I’ll title the email: “Confirming October 10th 10am Talk About Talk podcast interview” That way it’s clear what the email is about and it reinforces the details.
• Minimize the number of recipients and the number of emails. Ask yourself first – do I need to respond? If not, file or delete it. If you do need to reply, ask yourself whether everyone in the email really needs to see your response. Your default should be NO THEY DO NOT! Try not to CC so many people. Remember: the more you send, the more you receive. (We don’t need research to tell us that!) It just makes sense. 

3.    Sort Email by Subject

Particularly when you’re feeling overwhelmed, sorting or filtering your emails by subject can help you quickly clear-out redundant or unnecessary emails. This can be a fast and effective way to delete a lot of what’s in your inbox when it’s getting unruly. Use the filtering function. If there’s a chain of email on one topic, only the most recent gets to sit in your inbox. Everything else is filed, or preferably deleted.

4.    Unsubscribe

Unsubscribe from email distribution lists that you don’t read regularly. Yes, even the ones that you feel like you need to read for FOMO, but you still never do. I’m not suggesting you unsubscribe from everything. But rather, objectively evaluate which ones you open and read, and which ones you don’t. The criteria isn’t “which ones I wish I read,” its “which ones I ACTUALLY read!”

Here’s a Q. Can you guess what’s the #1 reason that people unsubscribe from email distribution lists? It’s not a tough one. People typically unsubscribe because they get too many emails !!!!!

Here’s a quick hack to help you make this unsubscribe process fast and painless. Go into your inbox and search for the term “unsubscribe." Look at the list of emails that comes up, and chop or unsubscribe from anything that you don’t read regularly. Keep in mind that most, if not all, of that content is available online anyway. You probably don’t need it cluttering up your inbox.

5.    Create Different Email Addresses

You could have one for work. One for online shopping. One for subscriptions. And a personal email for family & friends. That way, you can stay on-task!

6.    Use Folders & Only Touch Once

This suggestion gets a lot of traction from productivity experts. It’s actually 2 things: setting up folders or files AND only touching emails once.

Set up folders and use them. Productivity guru David Allen suggests deleting, responding (in two minutes or less), delegating, or deferring each email. Deferring means adding to your TO DO list, which should also be avoided. 

If you’re like me, you probably have a lot of folders. The advice I read was to minimize the number of folders you keep. We exaggerate in our minds the significance of each email and particularly the importance of where it should be filed. So keep it simple and minimize the number of folders you have.

Once you’ve sorted or filed the emails, you can always use the search function to find emails. 

The other part of this suggestion is to only touch each email once - the OHIO rule: Only handle it once. Have you heard of that? Move every email out of your inbox the first time you read it. According to David Allen and GTD, we should only take action on emails when we know it’ll take less than two minutes. This reminds me of Gretchen Rubin, the Happiness guru who encourages us to do anything immediately that will take less than one minute – be it responding to an email or putting your dishes away or… the one-minute rule.

7.    Delete Your Inbox ??

This is a surprisingly common suggestion. Deleting your entire inbox and starting from zero is a good option for some people. Start with a clean slate and new habits.

For some time, inbox-zero was a goal that seemed to get some traction, but that’s fallen out of favor. Again, email is the tool, not the project, right? Still, having zero emails in your inbox might reduce your stress. If your inbox is truly unruly, I suggest that you Copy your entire inbox into a folder called ARCHIVE & THE DATE. Then, you can start with a clean slate, armed with these suggestions for how to manage your inbox effectively.

TECHNOLOGY HACKS

Some of the things we’ve already covered might be considered technology hacks, like turning off notifications or setting up your folders. These are all tech-related things that you can set up once, and then forget about it. 

8.    Set Alerts for High Priority Senders

Label your top priority contacts – your clients, your boss, your spouse. Make them show up first. So when you do sit down to tackle your inbox, the high priority senders get your attention first and you don’t get distracted by lower priority emails.

9.    Set Up Canned Responses

Canned Responses are exactly what they sound like. If there's a message that you send over and over, you don't need to write it from scratch each time. Reuse what you've already written by making a template or canned response, as Gmail calls it.

A few examples of emails that you may send frequently might include “thanks but I’m not interested,” or a confirmation receipt, or an email with your bio and social media and contacts.

This might seem impersonal, but you CAN customize the email.

Once you have these templates set up, you can reply to messages that would otherwise take up unnecessary time - without even thinking much it, letting you focus on more important work.

10. Install Email Apps or Software

Given our common email angst, there are many “solutions” available in the marketplace, including:

• Superhuman – reportedly endorsed by much of Silicon Valley. Superhuman has just 15,000 users, with a waitlist of 180,000. 
• Spark is an app that promises “Intelligent email prioritization, noise reduction, and the most advanced email tools at your disposal. Reach Inbox Zero for the first time.”
• Slack is a collaboration-focused messaging app that some thought might replace email. 

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Ten Things You Can Do RIGHT NOW to Conquer Your Email Inbox!

I’m hopeful that just one or two things on this list will inspire you to experiment and make a change – a change that will ultimately reduce your stress and improve your productivity.

Please let me know what you tried - what worked and what didn’t? Do you have other suggestions?

If you are interested in learning more, there’s a “Conquering your email inbox” podcast from Talk About Talk where listeners also make suggestions. 

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Communication coach Dr. Andrea Wojnicki (call her “Andrea”!) is the Founder & Chief Talker at Talk About Talk. She earned her Doctorate of Business Administration (Marketing) from Harvard Business School, where her dissertation focused on consumer psychology and word-of-mouth. She is still obsessed with understanding why you said whatever it is that you just said! Recently, Andrea created “Talk About Talk,” a platform to share her research and expert interviews with people who want to up their communication game – both personally and professionally. If you have ideas, feedback, or if you or your team could use some communication coaching, Andrea would love to talk! You can connect with her at [email protected].

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References & Links

BOOKS

• “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” by David Allen - https://amzn.to/31KRfP2
• The GTD Workbook - https://amzn.to/31HI02b
• “Unsubscribe: how to kill email anxiety, avoid distractions, and get real work done” by Jocelyn K Glei - https://amzn.to/2Qm4HYt
• “Predictably Irrational” by Dan Ariely - https://amzn.to/30dxJhi
• “Because, Internet: Understanding the new rules of language” by Gretchen McCulloch - https://amzn.to/2QkZqAo

EMAIL HISTORY & STATISTICS

• Raymond Tomlinson (inventor): https://www.internethalloffame.org//official-biography-raymond-tomlinson and https://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Email-Statistics-Report-2019-2023-Executive-Summary.pdf
• Statista: https://www.statista.com/statistics/911592/frequency-consumers-checking-work-emails-outside-work-hours/
• eMarketer: https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Please-Dont-Unsubscribe-Why-Consumers-Email-Fatigue/1015219
• LifeWire: https://www.lifewire.com/how-many-emails-are-sent-every-day-1171210
• Expanded Ramblings: https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/email-statistics/
• Adobe Consumer Email Survey: https://theblog.adobe.com/love-email-but-spreading-the-love-other-channels/
• The NewYorker: “Was Email a Mistake?” https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/was-e-mail-a-mistake

TIPS ON CONQUERING YOUR INBOX

• HBR: https://hbr.org/2009/05/how-to-keep-your-email-under-c.html
• HBR: https://hbr.org/2014/04/8-ways-not-to-manage-your-email-and-5-tactics-that-work
• HBR: https://hbr.org/2019/01/how-to-spend-way-less-time-on-email-every-day
• FastCompany: https://www.fastcompany.com/90379441/how-to-manage-email-so-that-it-doesnt-control-you
• Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2012/10/08/6-ways-to-be-more-productive/#23676df55605
• Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhall/2018/06/03/8-simple-tips-that-will-improve-the-way-you-use-email/#24d6b637115e
• Inc.: https://www.inc.com/david-finkel/12-email-tips-to-increase-your-productivity.html
• Getting Things Done: https://gettingthingsdone.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/GettingEmail.pdf
• Unpacked on Inbox Zero: https://unpacked.mailbutler.io/2019/01/09/gtd-email-inbox-zero-flowchart/
• City A.M.: https://www.cityam.com/inbox-anxiety-how-regain-control-email/

TECHNOLOGY

• Canned Responses for Gmail & G-Suite: https://google.oit.ncsu.edu/core/gmail/canned-response/
• https://superhuman.com/
• https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/27/my-six-months-with-30-month-email-service-superhuman/
• https://sparkmailapp.com/
• https://slack.com/intl/en-ca/
• https://techcrunch.com/2013/08/14/say-hello-to-slack-the-newest-enterprise-social-network-and-the-latest-effort-from-flickr-co-founder-stewart-butterfields-tiny-speck/

PODCASTS

• Tim Ferriss Interviews Drew Houston, co-founder and CEO of DropBox.: https://tim.blog/2018/08/29/the-tim-ferriss-show-transcripts-drew-houston/
• Gretchen Rubin - Happiness guru & advocate of the one minute rule – https://GretchenRubin.com

Talk About Talk

• Weekly Email Blog – https://talkabouttalk.com/blog/#newsletter-signup
• Podcast – https://talkabouttalk.com/podcast-2/
• Shownotes for all episodes - https://talkabouttalk.com/podcast-2/#subscribe_section
• Andrea – [email protected]