Speaker 1: Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 1: Today's tip is about how to spend less time on email.
Speaker 1: Email is an incredibly useful tool. I started my career
Speaker 1: working as a journalist, and I learned to report before
Speaker 1: a lot of people had access to email. It was
Speaker 1: a very different experience. Trying to get people on the
Speaker 1: phone was often tough. Sources would call you back while
Speaker 1: you were on the phone with someone else, so there's
Speaker 1: a lot of phone tag and since you often had
Speaker 1: to go through gatekeepers to get people on the phone,
Speaker 1: it was tempting to keep calling the same people you
Speaker 1: knew would talk with you. Email has opened this all up.
Speaker 1: Everyone is more accessible. This is awesome in some ways,
Speaker 1: and it's also a problem in some other ways. Accessibility
Speaker 1: means anyone can email anyone anywhere in the world at
Speaker 1: any time, and so we do. I don't have to
Speaker 1: tell you that email overload is the cause of an
Speaker 1: incredible amount of workplace stress. People feel constantly behind. In
Speaker 1: My time management fable Juliette's School of Possibilities, In one scene,
Speaker 1: Riley notes that the number of unread messages in her
Speaker 1: inbox appears to be rising like seconds on a Stopwatch.
Speaker 1: People have told me that reading that scene has made
Speaker 1: them feel incredibly anxious. So I wanted to share a
Speaker 1: strategy that one before Breakfast listener wrote in to tell
Speaker 1: me was working for her. She's a project management consultant
Speaker 1: working for global clients. That means that I can receive
Speaker 1: emails at all hours of the day. She writes, I
Speaker 1: often wake up in the morning to a full day's
Speaker 1: worth of emails from Asia and a good chunk from
Speaker 1: Europe as well. Usually by the time I get through
Speaker 1: my responses, the American emails are starting to roll in,
Speaker 1: with Eastern time emails through my workday and Pacific time
Speaker 1: emails after I've left the office. When I first took
Speaker 1: on this position, she writes, I'd be answering emails at
Speaker 1: five am, nine am to five pm, and then into
Speaker 1: my evening. This not only led to burnout, but also
Speaker 1: my responses were less detailed than they should be, and
Speaker 1: I was being distracted from my other tasks and my
Speaker 1: personal life. So she writes, she discovered email batching. Here's
Speaker 1: what she did. I turned off email notifications entirely and
Speaker 1: set two one hour long blocks into my calendar. One
Speaker 1: in the early morning for Asia and Europe, and one
Speaker 1: in the afternoon for the Americas. I then stopped responding
Speaker 1: to any emails not labeled urgent outside of this time.
Speaker 1: So now, if you're listening to this, you may be
Speaker 1: wondering if all our listeners clients got angry and decided
Speaker 1: to find other consultants who would respond instantly. The answer
Speaker 1: is no. It was amazing how quickly, without saying anything,
Speaker 1: clients responded to the shift, she writes. If anything urgent
Speaker 1: came up, they used their phones, which is something we
Speaker 1: too often avoid. It allowed me to stay on task
Speaker 1: during the rest of my workday while also giving thought
Speaker 1: responses to emails during my designated time blocks. Sometimes I
Speaker 1: need more than an hour, she writes, and sometimes I
Speaker 1: need less, but setting the time in advance allows me
Speaker 1: to be more productive. I can be productive not just
Speaker 1: with email time, but all my time. She calls this
Speaker 1: a significant win. I agree. What this consultant realized is that, yes,
Speaker 1: clients want her to be responsive, but the reason they're
Speaker 1: emailing her is that they think she has great ideas.
Speaker 1: They think she can come up with genius solutions to
Speaker 1: their problems. If she's constantly on email and constantly moving
Speaker 1: back and forth between email and other things. She can't
Speaker 1: do that, plus her responses are going to be less
Speaker 1: well thought through than they might be. The hard truth
Speaker 1: here is that sometimes you need to disappoint someone's immediate expectation,
Speaker 1: such as that they will receive an immediate response, in
Speaker 1: order to meet the bigger expectation, which is an actual
Speaker 1: solution to their challenges. So i'd encourage you to try
Speaker 1: back your email responses now. Don't worry. I'm not one
Speaker 1: of those people who says you should never check email
Speaker 1: in the morning or only once per day. For most people,
Speaker 1: that's really just not workable. You'll notice that our project
Speaker 1: management consultant said she would answer stuff marked urgent, and
Speaker 1: if she's doing that, that means she's looking at her
Speaker 1: inbox more frequently than twice a day. It makes sense
Speaker 1: if someone emails you that your one thirty meeting is canceled,
Speaker 1: you'd probably like to know that. If you're not getting
Speaker 1: a whole lot of email from overseas, so you don't
Speaker 1: need to make sure you respond before the end of
Speaker 1: another continence workday, then maybe your response blocks can be
Speaker 1: at different times, say ten thirty to eleven thirty in
Speaker 1: the morning rather than really early like six or seven am,
Speaker 1: and then three thirty to four to thirty in the
Speaker 1: afternoon to get the stuff from the day. But setting
Speaker 1: two blocks of time to respond to emails and then
Speaker 1: maybe two other times to quickly check in for urgent
Speaker 1: questions means that you're never more than about two hours
Speaker 1: from seeing someone's email at least during your workday, and
Speaker 1: that's pretty good. It also guarantees that you're spending about
Speaker 1: two and a half hours per workday on email instead
Speaker 1: of feeling like you're spending ten hours a day on email.
Speaker 1: You could possibly even work fewer hours and make more
Speaker 1: progress on your big projects if you're not in your
Speaker 1: inbox all the time. And hey, I am all in
Speaker 1: favor of anything that helps people feel less busy while
Speaker 1: getting more done. So think about your schedule and whether
Speaker 1: you could schedule two email response blocks and maybe a
Speaker 1: few more scheduled quick checks during the day. If you
Speaker 1: try it, let me know. And thanks to our project
Speaker 1: management consultant for sending in her schedule strategy. I'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from listeners, so if you have a question
Speaker 1: or a tip, please let me know. You can email
Speaker 1: me at Before Breakfast podcast at iHeartMedia dot com. I'll
Speaker 1: probably be responding, but not more than twice a day.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and
Speaker 1: here's to making the most of our time.