Do you find yourself constantly refreshing your email inbox?
One of my clients—we’ll call her Meredith—is a real estate agent. Closing a deal on a real estate transaction takes a lot of steps: making sure funds are in place, loan processing, inspections, etc.
Meredith found herself lingering in real estate limbo, waiting for the next email so she could proceed with the next step; she felt like she needed to reply right away in order to keep things moving. Obsessively pressing refresh on her inbox, it seemed like she couldn’t get anything done.
Meredith was, like many of us, a slave to her inbox.
The Distraction of Email
Email is one of the great self-distractors. It’s so easy to get sucked into the reply-wait-reply cycle, whether we’re a real estate agent, a stock broker, a freelancer, or starting a business.
And even more than that: checking email can become a compulsion. Even if we aren’t expecting anything, we refresh our inbox constantly throughout the day without even thinking about it.
In fact, the average American professional spends over five hours a day checking and reading their email, and over half of this time is spent checking their work email, versus personal email.
The truth is that you don’t really need five hours every day to deal with your email – you need less than half of that – imagine what you could accomplish with three or four more hours in your day!
The Myth of the Immediate Reply
The business world likes to perpetuate the myth that we must answer every email within minutes of receipt or somehow we will miss the next big opportunity. Can you say “FOMO”? (Fear of Missing Out)
The truth is it’s pretty unlikely that the person who sent the email is sitting by their computer or looking at their phone waiting for your response. Once Meredith acknowledged that fact, it became a lot easier to give herself permission to work on other things and come back to her email when she had time to process it.
After all, when we go on vacation for a week or even longer, somehow the world seems to keep going, even without an immediate email response from us.
No More Email Obsession
When we obsessively check our email throughout the day, we end up processing and responding to emails one at a time, which ends up taking more time than dealing with them in batches.
The solution, then, is simple: Process incoming email in blocks instead of addressing each one as it comes.
Set aside two or three 30-minute blocks each day to deal with what has come in during the past few hours.
During these blocks, use the following four questions to help you process these emails quickly and efficiently. Please note that the answer to each is a simple “yes” or “no”.
1. Is the email important? If not, delete it.
2. Is it actionable? If not, file it wherever you keep relevant reference information.
3. Will the action take less than 2 minutes to complete? If so, do it now.
4. If the action required will take more than two minutes, does it require you personally, or could someone else do it? If someone else could do it, delegate the action to them. If you personally must complete the action, put it on your next actions list or to-do list.
If you’re a visual person, I recommend printing out this simple flowchart breaking down this process:
The key principle of this method is to open the email only once and deal with it right away. This way, these emails no longer clog your inbox and threaten to distract you while you process your new email.
Bonus Tip:
We use auto-responders when we’re away on vacation. Why not use it while you’re working?
Consider creating an auto-response that indicates when during the day you will be more likely to respond (i.e. the blocks of time you’ve set aside to process your email).
You can also indicate in this auto-response how to best get in touch with you should there be an emergency or item that requires immediate action. If you’re expecting a specific email from someone in particular, let them know to ping you in another way when they send the email.
Auto-responses reassure senders that their email has been received and that you will be addressing it, without putting extra pressure on you to respond immediately.
Because once you take control of your email, it will finally stop controlling you.
How do you handle your inbox? Comment below.
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Need help taking control of your inbox? Sign up for my free 5-day challenge, “5 Days to Inbox Zero.” We start on March 2! Join me here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/email-challenge-5-days-to-inbox-zero-tickets-94004529077
