Nir Eyal

Make Email a Useful Tool

August 12, 2022

Along with attending meetings, nothing dominates our workday more than tending to email messages. But does this have to be the case? Instead of allowing email to dictate how we spend our work lives, let’s put it back into the place where it belongs as just another tool that adds to rather than diminishes our overall productivity.

In my work coaching clients, I ask them to report how they spend their workday, and they so often report that they are consumed with back-to-back meetings all day every day. This is obviously not optimal and it needs to be gotten under control as I wrote about previously.

When you spend so much time in meetings, you either choose to multitask while in attendance or do your work (including email) when the workday should be complete. Multitasking while in meetings is not the solution as you are present for neither the meeting or the work you are trying to focus on. I suspect you really don’t need to attend all the meetings you go to, and it will serve you better by choosing to opt out whenever possible.

Regarding email, there are many things to consider so that you don’t spend nearly as much time on it. Many of these may be quite obvious, but that doesn’t mean we all do them.

Nir Eyal, author of Indistractable: How to control your attention and choose your life, says it’s important to hack back on email. His suggestions include:

  • If you want to receive fewer emails, send fewer emails. You likely contribute to the problem of too many emails every time you send one. Consider whether email is the right medium for your message. Would it be better to pick up the phone to avoid a constant back and forth via email messages? Perhaps a face-to-face meeting would work even better. Text, slack message, or is it even necessary to write or respond?
  • Consider having office hours for when you will respond to emails. Rather than act as if every message is both urgent and important, choose more intentional follow through. Rather than checking your inbox constantly, specify times each day when you will check and respond as needed. Consider putting those times in an automated response, so people are not surprised when you delay in your reply.
  • Hesitate in replying as everything is not urgent and can go away with time. Oftentimes you may think “this will just take a minute, so I’ll reply,” even though others also included on the distribution may appreciate the opportunity to respond and thereby share their knowledge and expertise. Then perhaps next time an issue comes up, the sender may choose to reach out only to that person thereby reducing the number of emails you receive.
  • Schedule delayed delivery. Many people tend to respond or compose email messages late at night or on the weekend. This flexibility is great for you, but the recipient may sense more urgency than you intend. Consider scheduling a delay to have them sent early the next morning or the following Monday morning.
  • Eliminate unwanted messages. Reducing the number of email messages should begin with unsubscribing to those you don’t read or want. In the workplace, if you are receiving internal messages on projects or subjects that are not important to you, consider politely requesting that you not be included on the distribution list.

Another idea is to use the 1-minute rule. If you can reply within one-minute, then do it now. Otherwise plan to reply to all other emails at a designated time when you can focus more thoroughly. Again, try to avoid doing this throughout the day as it will detract from your ability to focus and accomplish important work.

Email has been around for decades and, while it may be shunned by many Millennials and Gen Zers, it will likely remain in the workplace so it’s important to make it work for us rather than against us. Make email a useful tool.

Email is our Biggest Distraction

May 24, 2011

We’re all beginning to learn and accept that multitasking is indeed a myth. Changing our multitasking behavior will lead to greater productivity, but it will also take time. Email may be the right place to begin.

Dave Crenshaw, author of “The Myth of Multitasking: How ‘Doing It All’ Gets Nothing Done,” argues that the most common kind of multitasking doesn’t boost productivity—it actually slows you down. While background tasking like watching television while you work out can be fine, what he calls “switchtasking” is trying to juggle two tasks by refocusing your attention back and forth between them, and losing time and progress in the switch.

I contend email is the biggest distraction and the thing we try to multitask with the most.

In 2006 more than 6 trillion email messages were reportedly sent everyday. Last year that increased to an average of 160 messages per day per office worker. More than 88 percent of these messages were considered junk—spam, commercial newsletters or other unsolicited messages. And though filters can help reduce the junk, email still consumes way too much of our time.

Two things may help: 1) reduce the number of email messages you send and reply to, and 2) read email less frequently.

I wrote in an earlier post that email messages can easily work against you in conveying information. What may seem entirely clear to you when you write and send a message, can be totally misunderstood or misinterpreted by the receiver. This is due to limitations of the written word as well as other factors.

You can find lots of advice on the web with regard to email etiquette and advice on when and when not to use email.

Jim Gerace, who was earlier vice president of corporate communications at Verizon Wireless, issued employee guidelines on the proper use of email. I think the most important are:

  • Email should bring closure to work, not create more work.
  • Before you write an email, ask yourself if calling or visiting the recipient will bring better communication.
  • Keep emails short. Pretend that the recipient isn’t going to open the email and you need to make your point in just the subject line or the space in the preview pane.
  • If just one person needs information or clarification, don’t send it to a group.
  • Stay accountable. Sending an email doesn’t transfer responsibility.
  • Don’t send another email asking why you didn’t get an answer to the first one; call or visit the person you need information from.
  • Don’t spend more than five minutes dealing with an email. When you go over this limit, stop and make a phone call.

Timothy Ferriss, in his best-selling book “The 4-Hour Workweek,” recommends looking at email only twice a day in order to focus on the job at hand. He does the same with phone calls so he can focus on getting things done rather than constantly losing time and productivity through what Crenshaw calls switchtasking.

Ferriss ensures senders and callers all know his unavailability because he adds this to his signature on his email messages as well as his voice mail message.

Not everyone can follow this advice, but I suspect most of us probably can and should. Simply turning off the sound and pop-ups for when a new email message arrives may better enable us to stay focused on our task.

What about you? Do you measure your day by how many email messages you receive? If you made the choice to no longer be ruled by your inbox, would you be more productive?