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 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 stop watch.
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 work day and Pacific
Speaker 1: time emails after I've left the office. When I first
Speaker 1: took on this position, she writes, I'd be answering emails
Speaker 1: at five am, nine am to five pm, and then
Speaker 1: late into my evening. This not only led to burn out,
Speaker 1: but also my responses were less detailed than they should be,
Speaker 1: and I was being distracted from my other tasks and
Speaker 1: my personal life. So she writes, she discovered email BATCHNG.
Speaker 1: Here's what she did. I turned off email notifications entirely
Speaker 1: and set two one hour long blocks into my calendar.
Speaker 1: One in the early morning for Asia and Europe, and
Speaker 1: one in the afternoon for the Americas. I then stopped
Speaker 1: responding 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 had 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 work day, well also giving
Speaker 1: thoughtful responses to emails during my designated time blocks. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I need more than an hour, she writes, and sometimes
Speaker 1: I need less, but setting the time in advance allows
Speaker 1: me to be more productive. I can be productive not
Speaker 1: just with email time, but all my time. She calls
Speaker 1: this a significant win. I agree. What this consultant realized
Speaker 1: is that, yes, clients want her to be responsive, but
Speaker 1: the reason they're emailing her is that they think she
Speaker 1: has great ideas. They think she can come up with
Speaker 1: genius solutions to their problems. If she's constantly on email
Speaker 1: and constantly moving back and forth between email and other things.
Speaker 1: She can't do that, plus her responses are going to
Speaker 1: be less well thought through than they might be. The
Speaker 1: hard truth here is that sometimes you need to disappoint
Speaker 1: someone's immediate expectation, such as that they will receive an
Speaker 1: immediate response, in order to meet the bigger expectation, which
Speaker 1: is an actual solution to their challenges. So i'd encourage
Speaker 1: you to try back your email responses now. Don't worry.
Speaker 1: I'm not one of those people who says you should
Speaker 1: never check email in the morning or only once per day.
Speaker 1: For most people, that's really just not workable. You'll notice
Speaker 1: that our project management consultant said she would answer stuff
Speaker 1: marked urgent, and if she's doing that, that means she's
Speaker 1: looking at her inbox more frequently than twice a day.
Speaker 1: It makes sense if someone emails you that your one
Speaker 1: thirty meeting is canceled, you'd probably like to know that.
Speaker 1: If you're not getting a whole lot of email from
Speaker 1: overseas so you don't need to make sure you respond
Speaker 1: before the end of another continent's work day, then maybe
Speaker 1: your response blocks can be at different times, say ten
Speaker 1: thirty to eleven thirty in the morning rather than really
Speaker 1: early like six or seven am, and then three thirty
Speaker 1: to four thirty in the afternoon to get the stuff
Speaker 1: from the day. But setting two blocks of time to
Speaker 1: respond to emails and then maybe two other times to
Speaker 1: quickly check in for urgent questions means that you're never
Speaker 1: more than about two hours from seeing someone's email at
Speaker 1: least during your work day, and that's pretty good. It
Speaker 1: also guarantees that you're spending about two and a half
Speaker 1: hours per work day on email, instead of feeling like
Speaker 1: you're spending ten hours a day on email. You could
Speaker 1: possibly even work fewer hours and make more progress on
Speaker 1: your big projects if you're not in your inbox all
Speaker 1: the time. And hey, I am all in favor of
Speaker 1: anything that helps people feel less busy while getting more done.
Speaker 1: So think about your schedule and whether you could schedule
Speaker 1: to email response blocks and maybe a few more scheduled
Speaker 1: quick checks during the day. If you try it, let
Speaker 1: me know. And thanks to our project management consultant for
Speaker 1: sending in her schedule strategy. I love to hear from listeners,
Speaker 1: so if you have a question or a tip, please
Speaker 1: let me know. You can email me at before breakfast
Speaker 1: podcast at iHeart media dot com. I'll probably be responding,
Speaker 1: but not more than twice a day. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
Speaker 1: the most of our time.