The Go Slow Life and Work Email
One of the hardest habits to break when moving to a Go Slow Life lifestyle is ending the habit of checking email (DMs, FB messages, etc.) constantly.
One of my favorite visual ways to consider the reality of how your life is when you are checking email constantly is like sitting by your USPS mailbox to do your work. For me, it would be on the curb, with my feet in the street, laptop in my lap, working, waiting for the letter carrier or UPS/FedEx/Amazon delivery truck to stop by. Stopping your work when any car drove by wondering: Do I have any new mail? Is this important?
What on earth!
You would never live your life like that!
That's exactly the same effect on your workflow when you are checking an email inbox constantly throughout the day, particularly if you are someone who does knowledge work, e.g. work that requires a cognitive demand. That can include many different skillsets, but the common thread is that you have to pay attention to what you're doing and the work is mostly mental.
Research* shows that changing tasks constantly is a very inefficient way of working and does not yield high quality results. Conversely, training the brain to work in a focused, deliberate way can yield far better results both in efficiency and quality. And believe it or not, training the brain to be more efficient and get into a deep state of cognitive work is a skill that can be taught and honed.
There are a few ways to tackle this.
1) You can close your email program completely and only check it for 5-10 minutes at the top of the hour or every 90 minutes or whatever is appropriate with your work. This works if you don't need to use your email program for your cognitive skills. This does NOT work for me because much of my focused work is reviewing email correspondence, communication and files and crafting thoughtful responses to them.
2) You can put your inbox on "offline mode" and continue to work in the inbox without any new messages coming in to distract you. This is what I do. (There's a button in my Outlook called "Work Offline." For Gmail, there's a plugin called "Inbox Pause" that works in the same way.)
3) You can change your Send/Receive settings in Outlook to be every 60 minutes automatically, but I don't love this idea. I prefer that I am the one to choose when I'm ready to review new messages, not on an automated timeline.
When I review messages, I do one of a few things:
1) If it's a quick correspondence, I reply and file the original message away in a completed items folder (I have one for every client)
2) If it's a lengthier response that's required, I respond immediately and say "Got your message-- this will take me a short while to respond to. I will be back with you by {timeline}."
3) If it does not require me to respond at all, it gets forwarded/delegated to the appropriate team member, filed away or deleted as appropriate. (See also my post on Inbox Zero -- marketing emails, or any email that is trying to get ME to BUY or DO something automatically skips my inbox and goes into a marketing folder which I review once a day.)
4) If the necessary response to the email is more efficiently handled over the phone, I immediately pick up the phone and call to say, "I got your email about {subject}. I figured it was easier discussed over the phone." And then after the conversation is done, I send an email response for my own benefit confirming the outcome of the phone discussion, and so I have a clear written communication about what was decided on the phone.
Remember, CLEAR is KIND. Vagueness is bothersome to the person who sent the email. If you can't or aren't able to do something, respond saying that you're not able to handle that item and offer an alternative solution.
Another rule of thumb when it comes to email, is never send a "nastygram" via email. Never reprimand someone by email. Those conversations are best handled carefully in person or on the phone. Nobody wants a bomb of an email in their inbox -- don't launch them yourself.
xo
Chase
*there is research, I just didn't bother to link it here. Check out the bibliography in the book DEEP WORK for more info :)
One of my favorite visual ways to consider the reality of how your life is when you are checking email constantly is like sitting by your USPS mailbox to do your work. For me, it would be on the curb, with my feet in the street, laptop in my lap, working, waiting for the letter carrier or UPS/FedEx/Amazon delivery truck to stop by. Stopping your work when any car drove by wondering: Do I have any new mail? Is this important?
What on earth!
You would never live your life like that!
That's exactly the same effect on your workflow when you are checking an email inbox constantly throughout the day, particularly if you are someone who does knowledge work, e.g. work that requires a cognitive demand. That can include many different skillsets, but the common thread is that you have to pay attention to what you're doing and the work is mostly mental.
Research* shows that changing tasks constantly is a very inefficient way of working and does not yield high quality results. Conversely, training the brain to work in a focused, deliberate way can yield far better results both in efficiency and quality. And believe it or not, training the brain to be more efficient and get into a deep state of cognitive work is a skill that can be taught and honed.
There are a few ways to tackle this.
1) You can close your email program completely and only check it for 5-10 minutes at the top of the hour or every 90 minutes or whatever is appropriate with your work. This works if you don't need to use your email program for your cognitive skills. This does NOT work for me because much of my focused work is reviewing email correspondence, communication and files and crafting thoughtful responses to them.
2) You can put your inbox on "offline mode" and continue to work in the inbox without any new messages coming in to distract you. This is what I do. (There's a button in my Outlook called "Work Offline." For Gmail, there's a plugin called "Inbox Pause" that works in the same way.)
3) You can change your Send/Receive settings in Outlook to be every 60 minutes automatically, but I don't love this idea. I prefer that I am the one to choose when I'm ready to review new messages, not on an automated timeline.
When I review messages, I do one of a few things:
1) If it's a quick correspondence, I reply and file the original message away in a completed items folder (I have one for every client)
2) If it's a lengthier response that's required, I respond immediately and say "Got your message-- this will take me a short while to respond to. I will be back with you by {timeline}."
3) If it does not require me to respond at all, it gets forwarded/delegated to the appropriate team member, filed away or deleted as appropriate. (See also my post on Inbox Zero -- marketing emails, or any email that is trying to get ME to BUY or DO something automatically skips my inbox and goes into a marketing folder which I review once a day.)
4) If the necessary response to the email is more efficiently handled over the phone, I immediately pick up the phone and call to say, "I got your email about {subject}. I figured it was easier discussed over the phone." And then after the conversation is done, I send an email response for my own benefit confirming the outcome of the phone discussion, and so I have a clear written communication about what was decided on the phone.
Remember, CLEAR is KIND. Vagueness is bothersome to the person who sent the email. If you can't or aren't able to do something, respond saying that you're not able to handle that item and offer an alternative solution.
Another rule of thumb when it comes to email, is never send a "nastygram" via email. Never reprimand someone by email. Those conversations are best handled carefully in person or on the phone. Nobody wants a bomb of an email in their inbox -- don't launch them yourself.
xo
Chase
*there is research, I just didn't bother to link it here. Check out the bibliography in the book DEEP WORK for more info :)
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