I help Gen-X and Millennial leaders feel motivated, confident, and clear, and as a result many of my clients show up with task overwhelm. One of the problems they can bring to me is their inbox and how difficult it is to respond in a timely manner to all of the requests coming in.
If this is your challenge, you can start doing these five things right now to get your email under control and improve your relationships with the people sending them.
- Set up a short-term autoresponse (a.k.a Vacation or Out-of-Office message). The autoresponder should say something like, “I’m working hard to catch up after (X Special Event Got Me Behind) and I’ll respond as soon as I can, but probably not today.” Do not leave this on for weeks at a time. (I’ve experimented with that and found it unhelpful.) This works best if you can use it for a few days while you catch up, then turn it off.
- Set time on your calendar for doing nothing but catching up on email. This might be an hour a day or a three-hour block each week, but you need to set this appointment and keep it like you would any other.
- Ignore email completely for other blocks of time. Give yourself the gift of focus and be all in away from email outside of your email-task-block appointments. In some circumstances, you might share with people an alternative contact method, such as text or phone, for emergencies.
- During email catch-up time, put your full attention on each email and read it carefully. Respond just as carefully. How much of a waste of time is it to find out that when you finally responded to someone, you offered the wrong information because you weren’t paying attention to the actual questions they asked? Honor your email-task-block at least as much as you would a one-on-one conversation with someone you cared about, and be fully present.
- Convert larger tasks assignments into calendared appointments. If an email contains a request that requires more than a couple minutes’ work on your part, do not attempt it during your email time. Calendar the new task or put it on your to-do list.
Helpful hint for protecting relationships while you’re doing #5: Send an initial response to inform the original requester about when you expect to tackle the task. When the time comes, devote yourself to the task and update the requester on progress. As soon as it is finished, send the results back.
Email as a spiritual practice
Strange as it may sound, email can be a spiritual practice. Here’s how:
