My Email FOMO

My two-year old great niece was in high energy mode when my sister offered to take her to find more toys. Her five-year old sister started to run after them, then ran back to the couch to grab her milk and blanket before racing up the stairs in hot pursuit. I turned to my mom and said, "FOMO" with a smile. Her blank stare told me she had never heard this acronym before. Lucky her.

I explained that FOMO stands for Fear of Missing Out. We feel it when we think others might be doing something more fun than we are, or that someone else has the inside track on important information.

Today, as I worked on reducing my email inbox, I realized that I, too, suffer from a FOMO.

I subscribe to several news lists, blogs, and vendor-type emails. There never seems to be enough time in the day to read through them all, so I save them. Sometimes I even flag them if there's a topic or article I want to read later. What if there's a nugget in there that gives me that great insight or competitive edge? I surely can't miss out on that!

The problem is that there's rarely time to go back read them all because the next day brings a new barrage of information. What's worse is that if I'm looking for information on a topic, do you think I search all those emails first? Of course not! I do a fresh internet search, completing bypassing my stockpile of messages.

Like many of you, I start to feel anxious when I have too many emails in my inbox. For example, my personal email account has almost 25,000 messages! Several times a year I set aside some time to scan or read them but ultimately, like today, I just do a mass delete. I justify that action because the news is now too old, the promoted webinar date has long passed, or I have yet to find a nugget from that particular source.

Common sense would guide me to reduce the number of lists I am subscribed to, and of course that ends up being a part of my process, but what if? What if the list I unsubscribed to holds a future nugget that I miss - one the everyone else seems to know about? Certainly that would be a valid FOMO moment!

I don't know that I have a great solution, but earlier this week a colleague forwarded an article on productivity that included a process I was first introduced to almost 30 years ago (yes, it pains me to admit that).

While I'm not big on resolutions, I'm even less interested in taking valuable time on weekends and holidays to clear out messages long since forgotten. So from now on, I'm going to apply the 3D rule: Deal, Delegate, or Dump.

Deal. For each email I receive, I will determine whether it requires my personal attention. If I have time in the moment I will deal with it, like saving an article to use in a future client program or capturing a concept I don't want to forget. If I don't have time at that moment, I will drag that email to my calendar and schedule a block of time to deal with it. Yes, I realize most productivity experts have different recommendations, but I'm very visual and having everything on my calendar helps me reduce the number of things I commit to above and beyond what I've already committed to or what requires my personal attention.

Delegate. As a small business, I don't have a lot of people I can delegate to. Still, we have 21 affiliate partners, so if it's a project-related task, there's a chance that someone I'm working with on the project is better suited to attend to that email. If all else fails, I do have a 13-year old dog who I am sure would love to have something to do besides nap on the couch next to me while I work.

Dump. Anything that doesn't fit within the first two actions will be dumped (deleted) out of my inbox. Period. As I wrote this, all of a sudden my FOMO kicked back in - what if it's something I don't need now but might need in the future? Well, then it moves to "Deal." What if it's something I don't think I need but someone may ask me about this week? Simple, I won't empty my deleted folder for a couple of weeks. If no one asks and nothing comes up, I'll let it go. Yikes! Yes...I will!!

We all have FOMO about something. I encourage you to think about yours and develop a plan to address it within the next year. Benjamin Franklin is known to have mastered 13 virtues through a "week's strict attention." (Thanks, Adam Grant, Understory December 19, 2020!) How long will it take you to master one?