Email overload? Ten principles to regain time and focus

Archive All your emails!

I perform this task each new year. It provides me with a clean slate, a resetting of sorts. All the stresses and burdens created by our email are cleaned, and the tool is reset to what it is -- a communication tool.

Does that scare you?

If the answer is yes, ask yourself this:

1. Are you using emails for tasks?
2. Are you using emails as reminders?
3. Are you using it as a file system for reference information?

If you answered any of them with a yes, you need to use your email better. You are creating stress and losing time and focus throughout the day.

Stop Living in your email.

Shift your mindset and put your priorities first. Think about the people you are helping by not being in your email all day. Instead of worrying about crafting the perfect email.

Remember, email is a communication tool and should be treated the same as a phone call, text, Snapchat, WeChat, etc... It is a form of communication. It is one step faster than snail mail and slower than sending a text.

It should also be temporary, the same as a phone call, chat, text, etc...

Communication is about the Listener

Effective communication is based on the listener and not the speaker. Read that again. The listener must be open and receptive to the dialog for the communication to be effective. The speaker cannot change that fact.

You receive so many emails because people are trying to communicate based on their perception of what would be effective. However, their communication pattern might differ from yours; see principle 3 below. This will only cause frustration for the sender and stress for the receiver.

Which, if not corrected, will cause us to receive even more emails!

10 Key Principles to steal back time and reduce stress caused by email

Principle 1: Do priority work before opening your email

• Work on what is important and not urgent.
• Align to Franklin Covey Quadrant 2: Not urgent but important tasks
• Leverage The Eisenhower Quadrant to define important

Principle 2: Schedule time to check your email

• Schedule time to work on your email. Once or twice a day. I found lunchtime and before leaving the office to work best.
• Follow the 2-minute rule. Complete what you touch, do not use email as a reminder or task list. If it will take longer than 2 minutes, move it to another list.

Principle 3: Train Others on How you Communicate

• Share with others how to best communicate with you.
• I communicate this in a list. I send "Chat, text, phone, email."
• The hard part is sticking to your principle and helping others adapt to them. Please don't make exceptions for each person, as it will undermine the entire process.

Principle 4: Do not email first thing in the morning or last thing at night

• Tim Ferriss shared this principle and explained,

"The former scrambles your priorities and plans for the day, and the latter gives you insomnia."

Principle 5: Separate your to-do list from your email

• Don't use your email as a task list. It is a collection bucket, as mentioned in the book, "Getting Things Done" by David Allen.
• Use a tool like Todoist, Evernote, etc... to manage tasks.

Principle 6: Turn off email notifications

• Turn off all notifications, for that matter.?
• Notifications pull your attention away. You lose focus, and there is a good chance you will not get it back for hours.

Principle 7: Create an Auto Responder

• You can use technology to your advantage.
• Create a Google responder to help update people on how to communicate with you. (Principle 3)
• Tim Ferriss Auto Responders Post
• I've used this for years, and it works well

Principle 8: Unsubscribe!

• Are all those emails that you never read essential and valuable to you?
• Unsubscribe and clear out the clutter.
• They create mental stress because you know you want to read them and never do.
• It also makes it difficult to find important emails.

Principle 9: Prepare Scripts for Responses

• Following the idea of the autoresponder.?
• Create templates that can help you answer faster. See rule 6 in this Ladders.com blog post.

Principle 10: Do not organize your email

• Remember, this is a communication tool, like picking up the phone and calling someone, sending a text, or opening a chat. We don't organize those, so why organize email?
• What is the level of communication that you need?
• Level 1 - close friends and work associates you interact with daily,
• Level 2 - Sporadic communication,
• Level 3 - Not important emails.
• Create filters that allow you to manage these levels in your inbox, and do not try to do anything more than that.

Cheers, and Have a Great Week