We recently asked our Profit First Professionals members what task they would eliminate from their day if they could. The overwhelming response?
Email.
A 2019 survey by Adobe found that consumers spend approximately three hours per day checking work email...nearly half of a standard eight-hour workday. And email isn’t constrained to working hours. Many of us check our emails when we’re supposed to be “off the clock.”
In short, email has become a source of stress and one of our biggest time drains.
We need an effective way to combat email overload and tame our inboxes.
Reframe your relationship with email
“The inbox is nothing but a convenient organizing system for other people’s agendas,” Brendon Burchard of High Performance Academy states. And it’s true...although some of the emails in your inbox are necessary to move your own agenda forward, many of them are questions from clients and team members, invitations to attend webinars, notifications from apps, or offers to purchase products.
In other words, other people’s priorities.
That doesn’t mean these emails aren’t important, but you shouldn’t spend half your day reacting to them. Following are three tips to help you change your relationship with your email and tame your inbox once and for all.
Put email on a schedule
When you check your email isn’t as important as how long you spend doing it. Parkinson’s Law states that work expands to fill the time available, so - in order to prevent email from taking over your day - you must reduce the amount of time available to check and respond to email, while still making sure your inbox is tended to in a timely manner.
Enter time blocking. Put a 30-minute “Email” appointment on your calendar two to three times each work day, then only work on email during these time blocks. Set alarms on your phone if necessary to ensure you are keeping to your time constraints. Having a limited amount of time to spend on email will help you decide which emails get your attention and which ones to delegate or simply delete (and unsubscribe from.).
But what about those emails that require additional time or research to answer? Schedule time on your calendar to research and craft those responses, and send a short reply to the sender letting them know when they can expect a thorough answer from you. Very few emails demand an immediate response.
This leads us to our next tip:
Debunk the myth of the urgent email
A common objection to scheduling email is the fear of missing an “urgent” message.
There’s no such thing as an urgent email.
We teach people how to treat us, and that extends to communication. Create a communication policy regarding email, and share it with clients at the beginning of your engagements. Then let team members, friends, and family know that email is not the best way to reach you for urgent matters. Setting an autoresponder on your email reinforcing your email policy will let emailers know when they will get a response to their message...and how to contact you if they have a true emergency.
Send fewer emails
Too often, we send an email when a brief phone or face-to-face conversation would suffice.
Before sending an email, determine if an email is even necessary. If it’s a quick question, skip the email and pick up the phone instead. You can always follow up with an email if the caller doesn’t answer (or if their voicemail is full.)
Also, avoid having “email conversations.” If an email thread goes beyond three or four interactions, move the conversation to a phone call.
Sending fewer emails results in receiving fewer emails...and fewer emails received means a tamer inbox.
You can fall back in love with your inbox
Okay, maybe that’s a stretch, but you can alleviate the stress around email. Taming your inbox is a process, so give yourself some grace when you first implement these strategies. With time, you will find email takes up less of your day, freeing you to work on the most important things in your firm.
Author Bio: Billie Anne Grigg is the Senior Strategic Guide at Profit First Professionals and the founder of Pocket Protector Bookkeeping. She has more than 20 years of small business bookkeeping and cash management experience. Billie Anne is passionate about elevating the bookkeeping and accounting community so we can help small businesses thrive.