Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Good Morning, This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 1: Today's tip is to get out of the habit of
Speaker 1: just checking email. Open your inbox when you've got the
Speaker 1: time and resources to deal with a reasonable chunk of
Speaker 1: your messages. Otherwise do something else. Many of us have
Speaker 1: a complex relationship with our inboxes. Email is an incredibly
Speaker 1: useful tool, but in cal Newport's recent book A World
Speaker 1: Without Email, he makes a good argument that email in
Speaker 1: fact makes us less productive. That's because people flit in
Speaker 1: and out of their inboxes every six minutes on average
Speaker 1: during the work day. If deep work gets done during
Speaker 1: the work day, it is pretty much by accident. He
Speaker 1: also argues that email makes us miserable. We can ignore
Speaker 1: emails from strangers, but ignoring emails from close colleagues or
Speaker 1: our supervisors feels to our caveman brains like we are
Speaker 1: snubbing a member of our tribe, something we would never
Speaker 1: do in person, and which makes us feel incredibly anxious.
Speaker 1: So we check every six minutes and get burned out.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure we can really reach a world without email,
Speaker 1: because well, email is still pretty cool. I love hearing
Speaker 1: from listeners. You can reach me at Laura at Laura
Speaker 1: Vanderkam dot com. I began my career as a journalist
Speaker 1: and I am old enough to remember learning to report
Speaker 1: without email. You could play phone tag with people all
Speaker 1: day long, but for many people, email is a huge
Speaker 1: time to ring. The goal is to minimize the time
Speaker 1: spent on email without becoming a bottleneck for others. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: it is possible to be responsive without checking nearly as
Speaker 1: often as you are probably doing right now. Key to
Speaker 1: this is to adopt a simple rule don't just check email.
Speaker 1: In other words, don't open up your inbox unless you
Speaker 1: plan to deal with a reasonable proportion of your messages.
Speaker 1: Checking email typically entails looking to see what's there, maybe
Speaker 1: handling anything pseudo urgent. Maybe I mean, maybe you just
Speaker 1: read it and move on, looking at one or two
Speaker 1: things that look fun or interesting, deleting an item or
Speaker 1: two so we feel productive, and then getting out of
Speaker 1: our inbox and saving the rest for later. Processing email,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, means actually doing something with our messages.
Speaker 1: That is, reading them, acting on them, responding to them,
Speaker 1: deferring them to later by setting the emails to come
Speaker 1: back or making a note in a planner calendar to
Speaker 1: attend to them, or deleting them. Now, you might think
Speaker 1: that checking email only when you can process them will
Speaker 1: make you less responsive, but my guess is not really
Speaker 1: observe yourself as you interact with your inbox over the
Speaker 1: next few days. Many times when we check, maybe even
Speaker 1: most times when we check, there is nothing of real
Speaker 1: substance there. Now we might delete a few newsletters or
Speaker 1: spam emails or irrelevant stuff, but absolutely nothing was gained
Speaker 1: by this check other than interrupting what could have been
Speaker 1: focused worktime. Other times we read messages but then don't
Speaker 1: do anything about them, and unless the messages answered some
Speaker 1: burning question of yours, again, this was pretty pointless. You
Speaker 1: could have learned about this topic later when you were
Speaker 1: breaking from your other work. Reading and then not dealing
Speaker 1: with the messages can also mess with your workflow because
Speaker 1: when you see the message again later, it looks opened
Speaker 1: and you'll be trying to remember if anything happened with it.
Speaker 1: Hence all those emails that began sorry I thought I
Speaker 1: had responded. Don't do this to yourself. If you read
Speaker 1: a message, either deal with it or come up with
Speaker 1: an official method for deferring it till later. Often what's
Speaker 1: happening with quick email checks is that we tell ourselves
Speaker 1: we're being responsive, but really we are just bored. We
Speaker 1: reach a little impassed with work and don't want to
Speaker 1: push through. So hey, let me see what's in my inbox.
Speaker 1: That's productive, right, it's still work. I'm not staring at
Speaker 1: the clouds. But you know, you might come up with
Speaker 1: some cool ideas staring at the clouds when you take breaks.
Speaker 1: And as for challenging work, far better to push through,
Speaker 1: get to a natural stopping point, and then process emails
Speaker 1: more fully. Now you may be thinking, I have to
Speaker 1: check email in case I get an urgent message. And
Speaker 1: if you are in a role where you do get
Speaker 1: truly urgent messages by email, well you may not have
Speaker 1: the power to force people to call you instead. But
Speaker 1: if you are in this position, you can still reap
Speaker 1: some efficiency gains by processing email in discrete chunks rather
Speaker 1: than flitting in and out all day. Try checking every
Speaker 1: half hour for those truly urgent messages and then shutting
Speaker 1: your inbox for the rest of the time. You can
Speaker 1: do a longer check every few hours or maybe even
Speaker 1: once a day. Half an hour is not too long
Speaker 1: for anyone to wait. There are a million reasons you
Speaker 1: might be out of your inbox for half an hour,
Speaker 1: but getting that uninterrupted time back is priceless. When we
Speaker 1: can loosen the hold that email has on us, we
Speaker 1: can get a lot more important work done and feel
Speaker 1: less frazzled and distracted. So stop checking email here and
Speaker 1: there when you are bored. Do something else, like read
Speaker 1: a poem, count your blessings, write in a journal, listen
Speaker 1: to this podcast. You'll probably feel a lot better in
Speaker 1: the meantime. This is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's
Speaker 1: to making the most of our time. Hey everybody, I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. You can send me your tips,
Speaker 1: your questions, or anything else. Just connect with me on Twitter,
Speaker 1: Facebook and Instagram at Before Breakfast pod. That's b E
Speaker 1: the number four, then Breakfast p o D. You can
Speaker 1: also shoot me an email at Before Breakfast podcast at
Speaker 1: i heeart media dot com. That Before Breakfast is spelled
Speaker 1: out with all the letters. Thanks so much, I look
Speaker 1: forward to staying in touch. Before Breakfast is a production
Speaker 1: of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app Apple podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. H