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How do I keep email from invading my inbox
I often hear people complain about sifting through hundreds of emails every day. That’s almost never happened to me in the last year. Maybe I am not as important as them. Who knows? Nevertheless, I thought I’d share my email work-style with you’ll today since Sparrow 1.2 has launched :) I had to plug this in since I love Sparrow and keep wondering why Apple still has not got their Mail app right. Lets dive into how I keep email to the minimum.
I have a mental rule to unsubscribe to newsletters/ notifications that I have not read in the last couple of months. They need to go.
Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn notifications skip the Inbox.
I check my mail only a few times in a day and that too when I can respond. Don’t treat your email like a Twitter stream where you check it whenever you have 30 secs to spare. You will be spending more time when you keep checking your mail (like a fanatic) and then rereading them again to respond. You tire your mind each time you go through this cycle.
Push email is overrated. Switch it off to experience true bliss. I have push notifications disabled on the iPhone (luckily I use SparrowApp which does not have push notifications). I want to be in control when I check mail.
If something is important I will get an SMS or a call. Constantly checking mail just drains the f$$$ out of you.
I don’t like seeing an email backlog. Makes me feel unproductive. I take action on a mail when I read it - delete, reply or move it to a Followup or an OnHold label. I then check the follow-up label a few times a day and archive the email. This makes me feel on top of my work at all times.
I extensively use Gmail’s filtering and labels so that the not so important emails (notifications etc.) don’t even enter my inbox. They get pumped directly into the label. This in itself has cut my emails to 50%.
We use DeskAway (a tool that we built) to collaborate on projects so all important conversations happen on that system. Email is spared from the cc chains and numerous replies for something trivial.
I pick up the phone if I can get something done faster than email. It cuts down the back and forth.
I keep telling myself that technology was built to help us work smarter so that we have time to do the other things in life. Since email is an important part of our work life, it is extremely important to tame it and develop habits that make us more productive and efficient.
Do you guys have any secret tactics to combat email Inbox invasion? Would love to hear in the comments section below. Have a productive day!
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Where is the time to think?
I notice people tweeting all day (no, they are not using Buffer) - I wonder if they actually get any work done or if they are confusing tweeting to working.
What do we do when we are waiting at the railway station, in the bus, at the doctors clinic or in between meetings? We whip out our smartphones and start checking Twitter, Facebook, Hacker News, Pinterest, RSS Feeds, Quora, Techmeme, <your favorite site/app> etc. Sometimes the confusion is in which of the above takes precedence for those precious 15 minutes that we have.
You see, smartphones are making us knowledgeable (by the amount we are consuming) but taking away the idle time that we used to enjoy where we thought about things, plotted strategies for business or just starred into space and giving our mind/body the much needed break.
Technology should make us feel free.
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Protect your sanity. Switch off push notifications for email.
I was amused by people complaining about not using Sparrow for iPhone because it does not support push notifications. BTW, Sparrow for iPhone is a fantastic app and its been about 10 days since I have fully converted to it. A class apart from the default mail app. Apple should buy Sparrow.
Back to push notifications…
- it tells you when to check mail
- it is distracting
- it interrupts your work
- it controls you (you should control yourself)
- all in all, it is detrimental to productivity cause you keep obsessing over email than getting any work done…
I switched off push notifications around last April and I have never felt better. The reason for the change was simple - I noticed that I was highly distracted with push notifications. Whenever I would log in to my iPhone to do something I would invariably find myself in the inbox. And then, I would forget why I logged into the phone in the first place. I was become reactive, unproductive and checking mail more than 20 times a day. Phew, technology is supposed to simplify out lives. Lets not become zombies.
I believe if something is urgent you WILL get a call or a message. Stop obsessing over email.
Here is a good writeup in HackerNews, Notifications are evil , that inspired me to write this post.
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Procrastinate reading to save time
At the end of the week, I noticed that I had a lot of reading on my plate. During the week, I would favorite tweets, save articles to Instapaper, have a back log of blogs (less than 10) in my RSS reader, have articles sent by friends/biz contacts via email etc… Stuff piles up and you start to feel annoyed by all the stuff there is still to read. However, I realized that not everything is as interesting as it sounds. Plus, a lot of the articles seem useful when you save them (to read later) but don’t seem that important when you actually get to reading them.
The idea is to procrastinate :)
So, I have started a 2-4 day rule. Articles that I look at 2-4 days later seem less and less important to read than 0 day. I can skip them easily - without feeling guilty.
Try it and it see if this method helps you stay away from information overload and save time.
