Taming the Email Beast

Many of us can resonate with the brilliant New Yorker writer and author Malcolm Gladwell when he writes,

"I remember when I first got email, back in the mid 1990's.  I would rush home with great anticipation and dial in on my 4400-baud modem and I would have … four messages from four very good friends.  And what would I do? I would immediately compose long, elegant responses.  Now, of course, I get up in the morning and go to my computer and I have sixty-four messages, and the anticipation I once felt has been replaced by dread" (The Tipping Point, p. 274).

Our dread is precipitated by the fact that, if we let it, e-mail could put us in a state of constant responsiveness.

When Beth and I were expecting our third daughter a few years ago, we decided that she would quit her part-time job and stay home to care for our girls.  But we needed her income and so, as I told one of our pastors one day over lunch, I would need to begin doing some consulting work to supplement our income.  "Why don't you work for us?" he asked.  I was already very involved in service in our church and so I asked, "So…. I'll keep doing what I'm doing now except … you'll pay me?"  "Sure," he replied.  And so within 48 hours I was on staff!  ('Course, I did end up doing a bit more work for the church that I had been doing!) 

Because I was part-time, we decided that I would mostly work from home.  I soon realized that this was a strategic advantage. 

By not having an office on our church's campus, I was put into a position where I didn't have to deal with the innumerable spontaneous daily interruptions with which many, many pastors have to deal.  I didn't have to move chairs around, hear about a staffer's very busy weekend, get pulled into an impromptu strategy meeting about this coming Sunday's morning service, or get recruited to provide a voiceover for the drama troupe's upcoming skit.  While someone might decide to reach out to ask me to help with any of these tasks, just the fact that I wasn't around meant 1) that they were less likely to do so and 2) that they might be more likely to consider if the requested task fell within my assigned job duties. 

Because I worked off-site, I soon came to realized that I was more able to actively impose my own agenda on my work day rather than passively responding to everyone else's agenda. 

Similarly, with email, it's very easy to live in a world where you're constantly responding to everyone else's agenda.

But there's a very simple solution:  Don't stay in email all day.

There is a cottage industry of time management books, seminars, tools, etc, with several works providing specific focus on how email can be enfolded into an overall time management .  But I'd like to suggest that as far as reigning in your email time goes, the simple advice of intentionally limiting the amount of time you spend in your email client could be the single best time management decision that you make. 

Staying in email all day is just like standing at the door of your busy office all day and responding to whatever and whoever comes to your attention.  When you are checking email, every email is urgent but not every email is important.  Staying in email all day subjects you to urgency's tyranny by robbing you of the ability to prioritize.  When you limit the amount of time you spend in email, you begin to tame the beast. 

While everyone will need to establish their own guidelines, here are a couple of suggestions for how you might proceed:

Every morning, boot up your computer and give yourself 40 minutes to review all emails you have left over since yesterday and all your new emails.  Prioritize those that must be responded to immediately and do so.  Next decide which emails need a response by the end of the day but also require you to do some research or work before you can respond.  Schedule the time that you need to do that and then respond to those emails as you can.  Force yourself to stop emailing after 40 minutes.  Then attend to other work items until around lunchtime when you'll dive back into email for 30 minutes.  And then toward the end of the day, schedule another 40 mins to dispatch some emails.  But be sure to leave yourself 30 minutes before you plan to leave so that you can adequately look over your next day's activities and plan your workflow.  Yes, of course there will be days when you'll get an email bomb that will dominate your entire day, but let those be exceptions and not the rule. 

Some of you have workflows where this might not work very well because a significant portion of your job simply is responsive and you are the legitimate go-to person for a number of folks within your organization.  If that's the case you might consider flipping this approach.  Stay in email all day, except schedule 90 minutes in the AM and again in the PM when you'll jump out of email and attack your short-term priority items (e.g. the performance review due tomorrow) and your long-term important activities (e.g. writing the job description for a new FTE you wish to convince the elders to hire).

If these time lengths don't work, change them until they do. 

Finally, there are days – maybe even weeks - when neither of these solution-sets will work.  That was the case recently when a talented and productive member of my staff had taken on a number of extra responsibilities and became legitimately overwhelmed.  My advice to her?  "Let's pretend you're on vacation."  I directed her to change her outbound voice mail and out-of-office email announcements that she was working on a special project, that she would respond when she could, but that if anyone had an urgent item, they could contact me.  Folks could then self-prioritize their requests and, if they really did see a request as urgent, they could contact me and I could either dispatch the item myself, pass it on to my employee as truly needing her short-term attention, or repurpose the item to another member of my staff. 

There is, in my opinion, no one omnicompetent system that will handle every circumstance or exigency.  I see crafting efficient work flows for each individual as much art as science.  Nevertheless, we are commanded to be circumspect about our use of time (Eph. 5:16) and a decision to be glued to email all day can be a passive decision to allow everyone else to set our priorities for us. 

Comments

[joe]

I find it challenging to be disciplined enough to stay out of my email throughout the day. But I know my productivity goes up if I do...

Trouble for me is that my calendar lives in my email client. So I can't keep it closed on days when I've got a few meetings.

My friend Tim Ferriss wrote a book where he advised checking email only twice a day. As opposed to 3 times per your recommendation. (same schedule as yours, except he discourages checking email in the morning to start the day)

Anyway, thanks for the reminder. Need to close both the browser and email client :)

[stephen shields]

joe, I also find it a challenge! There's just something about our psyche where we enjoy getting new communications that are just for us! It's like getting the mail (snail mail) when you know there are no bills.

My pastor agrees with Tim. He doesn't check email until 11 AM daily.

I believe that each person has to find their own rhythm but the important thing is to be intentional about it.