Three and a half highly effective tips for stress-free email usage

The most efficient collaborators save 18 to 24% of their time. That’s the equivalent of one day per week. According to collaboration expert Rob Cross, they do so by reducing the insidious costs of being “always-on” and putting structure into their workday.

Specifically, they employ healthy email norms along three categories: 1) limiting disruptions, 2) usage, and 3) format and organization. Last week, I wrote about limiting disruptions from email. This week’s post is about its usage. 

Think of a program that allows other people to constantly send to-dos your way – without a need to ask, let alone to think about when might be the right time for you. As it turns out, you already use such a program. It’s your email client. Your inbox is a to-do list put together for you by others. When using your inbox to manage your day, prioritizing what’s truly important is nearly impossible. So, here’s (the first half of) my first tip: Do not make your inbox your to-do list. Instead, move to-do’s from emails into an external list (ideally embedded in a fully-fledged productivity system, which I’ll describe in future posts). That little bit of extra work lets you approach your day strategically rather than reactively – with enormous benefits for your productivity.

Second, only touch email twice. In most email sessions, users go through their email without acting on it, which sucks up mental energy. To avoid that, adopt a practice which Nir Eyal describes in his book Indistractable. Since the most important aspect of an email is when it needs a reply, only touch each email twice. The first touch happens when deciding when to deal with it. It entails moving new emails from your inbox into either a “Today” or “This week” folder – depending on when it needs a reply (emails that don’t need a reply are best archived or deleted). The second touch happens when responding to emails that are due. As described in last week’s post, limit both touches to specific times each day, and try to batch them.

Third, have a “waiting for” list. Whenever you send an important email that you will need a response to, add it to a designated list. One classic way is dragging the email into a “waiting for” folder. To avoid using my email client as a to-do list, I personally resort to creating a card on a private, “waiting for” Trello board, which I review once a week. That practice takes a bit of time, but allows my mind to fully let go of an issue. Also, it prevents the lurking worry about letting something important fall through the cracks.

Pro tip: Don’t play energy-minimizing email ping-pong. That's the term Cal Newport has coined for the avalanche of back-and-forth email which is necessary for agreeing on a meeting date and time – you probably know what I mean. Instead of wasting your energy this way, let technology do the job for you. Use a tool like Calendly for setting up one-to-one meetings. If the meeting involves multiple people, employ a group polling tool like Doodle.

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Until next week,
Christian