This morning I sat at the desk, switched on the computer and immediately opened up my email accounts – one purely business, the other a mix of clients and friends. Inevitably I noticed a couple of interesting names, and opened a few others that looked significant. A good hour later I realised I hadn’t made a start on my priority list, so I moved away from the computer and went and made coffee. Time to start the day again.
Why do we do this? Start the day with the best of intentions and a proper must-do list, yet allow ourselves to wander off into the maze that is email. It consumes our time and inevitably creates more to do. Essentially it’s endless – a bottomless pit. Yet it seems we do this all the time. Why?
There are lots of answers. I think we are hardwired to be curious ‘I wonder what’s new?’; hopeful ‘maybe there’ll be something really interesting/ new business in here’; and distractable ‘if I do this I won’t have to do something harder’.
One of the best questions I’ve heard about email was ‘What to you want – do you want to make email work for you, or do you want to work for your email?’ And lots of people offer techniques for making it work for you. Here are a few that seem to make sense:
- Return email in chunks at specific times of the day– ideally no more than twice. And never first thing. ‘Oh but what about the urgent emails’ I hear you say. How often in your career have those emails been so genuinely urgent that you need to answer them at 9am rather than 11am? That’s all I’m suggesting.
If you’re not convinced, how about the science bit? It seems that when we break off from a task that requires our attention – creating a report, researching, writing a presentation – to look at emails, it takes a full 20 minutes before our brains are whirring along at the level we’d reached before the interruption. That’s a lot of time.
- Be exclusive.Don’t ask to be cc’ed on everything. Do you really need to know every twist and turn – would people take on a bit more responsibility themselves if you weren’t there to check it all?
- Be clear.When you find yourself confused or irritated by an email don’t answer it. Call the person. You’ll save endless convolutions, time and ‘if only’ moments, maybe avoid misunderstandings. Email has no tone, we never know if people are being funny/ cross/ neutral – yet we think we do and respond accordingly.
- Turn down the volume. If you don’t answer at once (and why should you?) you won’t get an answer back. Then you won’t have to respond to the new one… People admire those who take time to respond, it looks thoughtful, cool, controlled.
- Check your spelling and grammar. If it’s worth writing this email it’s worth making sure that if it was ever picked up and circulated more widely it won’t embarrass you. And you just might add to it or change it because you’ve had a bit of time to think.
- When in doubt, don’t.Or at most, write a draft (with no-one’s name in the address bar, just in case you send in error), store it for an hour or two – even a day? – and then see if you really want to send. It is amazing how quickly it can become irrelevant.
- Leave it behind sometimes. Go out to get lunch without your phone, talk to people instead.
- Remember – it’s meant to help you to do your job. Opening, sorting and answering email all day is not in your job description. Or mine.
How do you manage your email? Or does it manage you?