Or how I learned not to be attached to my email.
Email is a fact. Chat app companies can offer a Kool-Aid, but it doesn’t solve the overload problem by constricting users to their walls. I have recently discovered the full potential of email after being in the productivity game 24/7. The Broken Process
The inbox zero method advocates that you should deal with all emails immediately to avoid unmanageable buildup. If John Smith receives 121 emails per day, that’s fine. On a good day, I get 200-400 messages. To me, inbox zero was like a distraction-driven twitch to hit delete or reply every few minutes. Inbox zero is a constant preoccupation. Tweet this I found myself often stopping mid-sentence to delete an email notification. After feeling a severe pang of email burnout I decided to do the opposite and let my email pile up for 24hrs. It was satisfyingly Zen to just observe without worrying about it. Then came the insight.
It was the sheer volume of email I was receiving that first struck me. I thought it would be 80, but it turned out that there were 200 messages on a Friday. This meant that 200 messages had to be read and acted on – replies, delegated, archived or deleted. Email by humans (3%) and by machines (97%). There was email by humans (3%) and email by machines (97%). With everything in front, I could do basic math. RescueTime (an app that tracks my activity) showed me that I spent 56 minutes per day in Outlook. This is approximately 4 seconds per email plus the time and attention wasted on distractions for each interaction. This is especially true when it takes me out of the Zone. I knew I could do worse. Inbox Relevant
It turned out that I was giving away too many of my human attention for email generated by machines. My inbox was stuffed with unattended mailing rules, notification settings, newsletter subscriptions, and other information. To combat SPAM, I created a simple way to ensure that only relevant emails are delivered to my inbox each day. Gmail is great at fighting SPAM, but if your IMAP server allows SPAM to get through, you should tighten up your filters. Services like MailRoute.net can also help – just point your MX records to their servers and they’ll filter SPAM for you (no software install required).NewslettersNext, unsubscribe from any marketing materials and newsletters that you haven’t read in a month. Do not wishful thinking – “I might even read it someday” is unlikely to happen. You can always resubscribe. Don’t be lenient if you receive an unwelcome newsletter. Do not delete it. Unsubscribe immediately. (P.S. Just don’t unsubscribe from ActiveCollab newsletter because you might miss useful articles like this one).NotificationsNow, the big one: notifications sent by apps that you use to run your company. These notifications are the most annoying and most frequent. If your app allows it, you can combine all notifications into a daily report. ActiveCollab, for example, sends a daily recap email at 7AM telling you what happened.
