How to be ok at emails

I am regularly inundated with blogs and training on how to be a productivity ninja or guru, or some other dramatic goal. This is not a blog like that, this is a blog for those who are struggling, who just want to get back to enough so they can focus on other things. If that’s you, then welcome — let me tell you my story.

Recently I found myself really struggling with my work email. I’ve handled work email for a long time. I’ve had times with more incoming emails than I do now and coped fine. I know, and have used, many email organising techniques. I had the experience and the skills, but it still all came apart. I couldn’t get below 400 unread emails in my inbox despite trying really hard. When a work culture initiative suggested I sign up for another 5 work newsletters I actually cried I felt so overwhelmed.

I watched training videos on email management, I got tips from people. None of it was helping. Until I had one simple revelation: I didn’t need an optimal system like the articles and training pointed you towards — I just needed a functional system. When your system has failed, aiming for perfection is going to keep you trapped.

You need functional, optimal is optional

There is no “right” or “wrong” way to do email (or honestly, most things) — only functional and non-functional. So, how do you know if you have a non-functional system? For email it can look like one of the below:

You are missing reading/processing important information sent to you

You are actively avoiding your email because it’s making you feel so overwhelmed

You are spending way too much time on email because you’re worried about missing important information

Other people are frustrated because you are not sending them the emails you should

So, how do you get out of a non-functional system? Here are some steps that helped me:

1. Release yourself from equating a task with self-worth

Know that having an inbox full of unread emails does not make you a bad person. Being at inbox zero does not make you a good person. You’re not failing at everything, you are having a hard time with this task right now. You don’t need to “do better”, you just need to do different.

2. Check your system really is non-functional

Remember that there isn’t a right way. If it’s working for you, it works. If it’s not causing you anxiety, and you are reading and sending all the information you need to, your system works. You don’t need to meet anyone else’s expectation of what your inbox looks like.

3. Be really really honest with yourself

Don’t let a belief that something “should be easy” leave you trapped waiting for it to somehow become easy. Those quick-fix articles are a lie. If it’s hard for you, it’s hard. It may get easier as you build new skills. Or, it may never be easy, you may always have to work at it. That’s ok — we’re finding ways to make it functional, not “fixing” ourselves. We need to work with the reality of the situation, and not an imaginary version of you who can do everything easily and perfectly.

Don’t measure “easy” based on anyone but you

So what might that look like for your inbox? How about starting with these questions (honestly):

What is actually vital that I see and read as soon as possible?

What could I never read without impact to my job? What if I unsubscribed (or put it in a folder I don’t look at)?

What could wait for me to read it? How long could it wait?

What have I been hanging onto that could be interesting… but I haven’t been reading, and realistically am never going to get to? Can I let it go? What can I unsubscribe from?

If you have email on your phone, is it causing you to spend more time on emails that you need? Are you missing important information in the emails because you only skimmed them on your phone? Do you find yourself reading your emails twice — both on your phone and again on your computer? If so — can you take it off your phone? If not — why not?

Here’s some thing that are true — you don’t need to give every email the same attention, you don’t need to know everything, and you don’t need to read every email moments after it arrives.

4. Find strategies and patterns

Every day isn’t the same, so dealing with your email exactly the same every day doesn’t make sense. Even if it did, it would be pretty tedious. Working out some patterns in advance you can match to the day will help you from getting distracted or back in overwhelm. Don’t try to work out your patterns and strategies all at once, build them up a little step at a time. I added an item to my todo list to add to or adjust my email strategies each day, until I had built up to a functional system again.

Remember there is no “right way”, but here’s how I built up to the strategy I’m using now. It’s the one that works for me at the moment. You may want to do something different — the key thing is having a plan for different situations that you made in advance.

• Identify the different ‘types’ emails. For instance, calendar invites, newsletters, company updates, direct requests, support tickets, etc, etc. Consider the importance, urgency and needed actions for each type. Don’t do this all at once, gather the information over several days.
• Consider what different ways you could deal with an inbox of emails. For instance, here are some different approaches people use:

Read the most important first

Get rid of what’s not important first

Find and do all the quick tasks immediately

Read them all in the order they arrived

Have automated rules that pre-sort

• Next identify different situations that will need different approaches. Here are some of mine:

Regular everyday inbox

Back from extended time off

Crazy busy or overwhelm (what’s the minimum to be functional)

Rescue mission (getting back on track after crazy busy or overwhelm)

• Now, match up the strategies to the situations. You can have more than one option for each. Doing this in advance means that even when it’s a hard day you have a pattern for getting enough done. This is the key to any strategy.

Plan in advance for your hardest day — know the minimum you can do to still be successful when that happens

Photo by Paula Hayes on Unsplash

Let me give you some examples of my patterns.

First my “everyday pattern”. Here are some of the things I had to be honest about to get there.

• I don’t need to know everything about everything. I can unsubscribe from some things.
• I’m not actually going to ever get to those low-priority but interesting emails that have been sitting in my inbox for months. I can put a rule on to shuffle them into a folder (so that I still have the option to read…someday)
• Having email on my phone was creating a lot of anxiety — I didn’t need it there most of the time.
• Half reading an email over and over isn’t helpful. Better to wait a little and read it properly than try to get through everything all at once.
• I worry I’m going to miss something important

So, to reduce my anxiety about missing something, the first thing I will do is to scan for things to send directly to me or from my immediate team. If I’m on-call I’ll look over any support tickets or requests and deal with those before going back to my inbox. If I’m not, I can read over the support requests later. I’ll look at calendar invites in case there are any for today. If there are company-wide announcements I’ll read those. After that I have more flexibility. The things that really can wait (forever) go into folders. What is left are things that I do need to be aware of or do. However, I will space it out over the day. Quick tasks I use to get a nice “accomplishment hit” when I need it, longer reads I save for I’ve built up enough energy or have a gap that lets me take one on (so I don’t half-read them over and over). I don’t try to do them all first thing. Critically, I feel free to switch it up all or any of that when makes sense.

My “back from time off” strategy starts differently. My hard truths here included the fact that when there are too many emails I feel overwhelmed and struggle to get started. So, for this pattern instead of trying to deal with “important first” I assume that if I haven’t been there for a week or more then I have a little space before jumping back in (you’ll need a little more self-honesty about how critical you are). Based on that, this pattern focuses on what I can get rid of first — old calendar invites, notifications from systems, threads I can just keep the latest of. I get more quickly to an inbox that looks more manageable before I try to find the “important stuff”, and knowing you’ll have the “win” of knocking the number down makes it easier to get started.

Each pattern tries to deal honestly and realistically with what you are finding challenging, and work with that rather than against it.

6. Accept that the system will eventually fail

That’s probably not the last step you were hoping for. I’m sorry, but we are being really honest. Life changes. You change. One day the beautifully crafted system will simply not work anymore. It’s ok. Decide today to forgive that future you. Go back to step one and start again. Knowing how to build a new system is as important a skill as knowing how to maintain one.

You got this. I believe in you.

This blog wouldn’t exist without so many people out there whose ideas helped me learn new ways to be, and reframe my thinking, including KC Davis, Cathy Howe, and Tamara Rosier. Thank you!