WEBVTT - Second Cup: How to Spend Less Time on Email 0:00:01.800 --> 0:00:06.199 Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. 0:00:06.960 --> 0:00:10.280 Today's tip is about how to spend less time on email. 0:00:11.600 --> 0:00:15.720 Email is an incredibly useful tool. I started my career 0:00:15.760 --> 0:00:18.120 working as a journalist, and I learned to report before 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:20.720 a lot of people had access to email. It was 0:00:20.760 --> 0:00:23.680 a very different experience. Trying to get people on the 0:00:23.680 --> 0:00:26.960 phone was often tough. Sources would call you back while 0:00:26.960 --> 0:00:28.920 you were on the phone with someone else, so there's 0:00:28.960 --> 0:00:31.480 a lot of phone tag and since you often had 0:00:31.480 --> 0:00:34.120 to go through gatekeepers to get people on the phone, 0:00:34.280 --> 0:00:36.640 it was tempting to keep calling the same people you 0:00:36.720 --> 0:00:40.680 knew would talk with you. Email has opened this all up. 0:00:41.640 --> 0:00:45.920 Everyone is more accessible. This is awesome in some ways, 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:50.199 and it's also a problem in some other ways. Accessibility 0:00:50.240 --> 0:00:54.800 means anyone can email anyone anywhere in the world at 0:00:54.840 --> 0:00:58.280 any time, and so we do. I don't have to 0:00:58.280 --> 0:01:00.520 tell you that email overload is the cause of an 0:01:00.520 --> 0:01:05.760 incredible amount of workplace stress. People feel constantly behind. In 0:01:05.800 --> 0:01:09.760 My time management fable Juliette's School of Possibilities, In one scene, 0:01:09.840 --> 0:01:12.520 Riley notes that the number of unread messages in her 0:01:12.520 --> 0:01:16.320 inbox appears to be rising like seconds on a Stopwatch. 0:01:17.200 --> 0:01:19.680 People have told me that reading that scene has made 0:01:19.680 --> 0:01:23.000 them feel incredibly anxious. So I wanted to share a 0:01:23.040 --> 0:01:26.040 strategy that one before Breakfast listener wrote in to tell 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:29.520 me was working for her. She's a project management consultant 0:01:29.880 --> 0:01:33.720 working for global clients. That means that I can receive 0:01:33.760 --> 0:01:37.080 emails at all hours of the day. She writes, I 0:01:37.120 --> 0:01:39.000 often wake up in the morning to a full day's 0:01:39.040 --> 0:01:41.320 worth of emails from Asia and a good chunk from 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:44.080 Europe as well. Usually by the time I get through 0:01:44.120 --> 0:01:46.960 my responses, the American emails are starting to roll in, 0:01:47.280 --> 0:01:50.560 with Eastern time emails through my workday and Pacific time 0:01:50.600 --> 0:01:53.960 emails after I've left the office. When I first took 0:01:53.960 --> 0:01:56.640 on this position, she writes, I'd be answering emails at 0:01:56.680 --> 0:02:00.320 five am, nine am to five pm, and then into 0:02:00.320 --> 0:02:03.920 my evening. This not only led to burnout, but also 0:02:03.960 --> 0:02:06.720 my responses were less detailed than they should be, and 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:09.760 I was being distracted from my other tasks and my 0:02:09.800 --> 0:02:15.320 personal life. So she writes, she discovered email batching. Here's 0:02:15.320 --> 0:02:19.400 what she did. I turned off email notifications entirely and 0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:23.040 set two one hour long blocks into my calendar. One 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:25.680 in the early morning for Asia and Europe, and one 0:02:25.720 --> 0:02:29.560 in the afternoon for the Americas. I then stopped responding 0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:32.520 to any emails not labeled urgent outside of this time. 0:02:33.720 --> 0:02:35.359 So now, if you're listening to this, you may be 0:02:35.440 --> 0:02:38.360 wondering if all our listeners clients got angry and decided 0:02:38.360 --> 0:02:41.840 to find other consultants who would respond instantly. The answer 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:46.880 is no. It was amazing how quickly, without saying anything, 0:02:47.280 --> 0:02:50.920 clients responded to the shift, she writes. If anything urgent 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:54.160 came up, they used their phones, which is something we 0:02:54.240 --> 0:02:57.120 too often avoid. It allowed me to stay on task 0:02:57.280 --> 0:02:59.919 during the rest of my workday while also giving thought 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:03.960 responses to emails during my designated time blocks. Sometimes I 0:03:04.000 --> 0:03:06.600 need more than an hour, she writes, and sometimes I 0:03:06.639 --> 0:03:09.520 need less, but setting the time in advance allows me 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:12.240 to be more productive. I can be productive not just 0:03:12.280 --> 0:03:15.919 with email time, but all my time. She calls this 0:03:16.400 --> 0:03:21.959 a significant win. I agree. What this consultant realized is that, yes, 0:03:22.240 --> 0:03:25.440 clients want her to be responsive, but the reason they're 0:03:25.480 --> 0:03:28.440 emailing her is that they think she has great ideas. 0:03:29.360 --> 0:03:31.640 They think she can come up with genius solutions to 0:03:31.680 --> 0:03:35.600 their problems. If she's constantly on email and constantly moving 0:03:35.640 --> 0:03:38.440 back and forth between email and other things. She can't 0:03:38.480 --> 0:03:41.240 do that, plus her responses are going to be less 0:03:41.240 --> 0:03:44.320 well thought through than they might be. The hard truth 0:03:44.360 --> 0:03:48.880 here is that sometimes you need to disappoint someone's immediate expectation, 0:03:49.800 --> 0:03:52.920 such as that they will receive an immediate response, in 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:56.400 order to meet the bigger expectation, which is an actual 0:03:56.400 --> 0:03:59.760 solution to their challenges. So i'd encourage you to try 0:03:59.760 --> 0:04:03.440 back your email responses now. Don't worry. I'm not one 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:05.400 of those people who says you should never check email 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:08.360 in the morning or only once per day. For most people, 0:04:08.360 --> 0:04:11.320 that's really just not workable. You'll notice that our project 0:04:11.400 --> 0:04:14.600 management consultant said she would answer stuff marked urgent, and 0:04:14.640 --> 0:04:16.920 if she's doing that, that means she's looking at her 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:20.440 inbox more frequently than twice a day. It makes sense 0:04:20.920 --> 0:04:23.600 if someone emails you that your one thirty meeting is canceled, 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:26.719 you'd probably like to know that. If you're not getting 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:29.159 a whole lot of email from overseas, so you don't 0:04:29.200 --> 0:04:31.120 need to make sure you respond before the end of 0:04:31.160 --> 0:04:34.320 another continence workday, then maybe your response blocks can be 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:37.200 at different times, say ten thirty to eleven thirty in 0:04:37.240 --> 0:04:40.080 the morning rather than really early like six or seven am, 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:42.040 and then three thirty to four to thirty in the 0:04:42.080 --> 0:04:44.920 afternoon to get the stuff from the day. But setting 0:04:44.960 --> 0:04:47.520 two blocks of time to respond to emails and then 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:50.280 maybe two other times to quickly check in for urgent 0:04:50.360 --> 0:04:53.799 questions means that you're never more than about two hours 0:04:53.800 --> 0:04:56.720 from seeing someone's email at least during your workday, and 0:04:56.760 --> 0:05:00.000 that's pretty good. It also guarantees that you're spending about 0:05:00.279 --> 0:05:03.120 two and a half hours per workday on email instead 0:05:03.120 --> 0:05:05.840 of feeling like you're spending ten hours a day on email. 0:05:06.400 --> 0:05:09.720 You could possibly even work fewer hours and make more 0:05:09.760 --> 0:05:12.160 progress on your big projects if you're not in your 0:05:12.200 --> 0:05:15.040 inbox all the time. And hey, I am all in 0:05:15.080 --> 0:05:18.080 favor of anything that helps people feel less busy while 0:05:18.080 --> 0:05:21.720 getting more done. So think about your schedule and whether 0:05:21.760 --> 0:05:25.359 you could schedule two email response blocks and maybe a 0:05:25.360 --> 0:05:28.359 few more scheduled quick checks during the day. If you 0:05:28.400 --> 0:05:32.719 try it, let me know. And thanks to our project 0:05:32.800 --> 0:05:36.440 management consultant for sending in her schedule strategy. I'd love 0:05:36.440 --> 0:05:38.479 to hear from listeners, so if you have a question 0:05:38.600 --> 0:05:41.400 or a tip, please let me know. You can email 0:05:41.440 --> 0:05:46.160 me at Before Breakfast podcast at iHeartMedia dot com. I'll 0:05:46.160 --> 0:05:49.680 probably be responding, but not more than twice a day. 0:05:50.360 --> 0:05:54.039 In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and 0:05:54.120 --> 0:05:55.560 here's to making the most of our time.