Introduction

I love email. It’s the main way that I operate my life. I try to funnel as much of my communication through my email inbox as possible. It’s a permanent record, searchable, almost everyone has access to it and it’s deeply constrained in the features available. I use it a great deal for work and personally, typically receiving 150-200 emails a day and sending 50-100 emails a day. If I could, even more of my meetings would be emails. I don’t think there’s a ceiling on the number I would like to receive and send outside of human time constraints, but I do want to make sure my email time and system are as effective as they can be in service of the goals that I have.

TODO List

I use email as my todo list. If it’s not in my inbox, it doesn’t exist. I don’t use TODO lists outside of my inbox. If someone needs me to do something and they ask verbally, I ask them to email me. The only time I use physical paper TODO lists is during task heavy periods in the business, like fundraising. Investors don’t follow-up after the meeting with a bullet point list of data requests, they will just raise it while you’re talking and it’s on you to follow-up. Outside of that, what’s in my inbox is what I need to do. My goal is to get to inbox zero, and stay there.

Scanning

I make aggressive use of the ‘e’ key in front, which is archive. I never delete anything, instead I prefer to archive anything that is dealt with or does not require a response. Recently, I’ve also been muting threads more as people @mention me for quick questions. I can answer the question, confirm that the task is complete, and mute myself from further emails on the thread.

When I’m scanning my inbox, I like to read each message. Rather than reading the subject line, the sender or the message summary, I typically just start with the most recent thread. I’ll do a brief (2-5 second skim) and if it doesn’t require a response, I’ll likely just skim and archive it. I like to read all my emails before I take action, unless something is truly a yes/no answer.

Actioning

I have two tags, and two categories of email. The tags are: delegate and resource. The categories are ‘requires consideration’ and ‘action immediately’. I like to leave ‘requires consideration’ emails for the end. Sometimes if I don’t have a lot of time, I’ll skim my inbox, action any ‘action immediately’ emails, and leave any that seem to require consideration. I’ll use tags periodically to evaluate what emails should either be delegated (not just the email, but the entire customer, process, function or project) or resourced (e.g. the category of question is best served with a long lived document with context, rather than a one-time answer). I will then go through and either delegate (properly) or resource (e.g. document in the appropriate place).

Requires Consideration

I leave all the emails requiring consideration to the end. These are the only emails (in my opinion) that actually should be prioritized. I tend to focus on unblocking others on the team first. If I have to decide something, or provide meaningful one-time context or feedback, I will focus on those things during available blocks of time. I put internal issues (e.g. team) ahead of external issues (e.g. customers) because they impact the functioning of the machine. Once I’m left with only external emails requiring consideration, I think about whether I have time in the current block to clear those emails, or whether I should snooze them for another time. Often I will decide to snooze an email for a more appropriate time (e.g. it comes in after hours and I would prefer to be sharp when I make that decision, so I will defer it to the next morning).

Clearing Emails

My goal is to clear my ‘requires consideration’ emails on a weekly basis, rather than a daily one. I can use snoozing emails strategically in order to do that. Some things are urgent, but most things in practice are really not urgent. No one dies if I don’t answer for 48 hours. Sometimes I want to reflect on something offline, so I will keep bouncing it forward (like snoozing your alarm clock) until I have settled on the best answer. I think if I’m able to act on these emails appropriately, while making more aggressive use over time of delegating things permanently or resourcing them with a context sharing document, I will be able to keep up with email demands. My goal is to clear ‘action immediately’ emails on the same or next day that they are sent to me.

Additional Ideas

I’d like to start splitting my email into ‘requires action’ and ‘updates’. I’d like to start thoughtfully batching updates once a week in a blocked time for reading update emails. Customer updates, staff updates, newsletters I actually care about, engineer discussion threads, financial statements and reports all fall into this category. I think it’s effective to batch these together in a 1-2 hour block of time, once or twice a week, and clear them all at the same time. The only time I should be using email outside of those blocks is to either work on ‘requires consideration’ emails (e.g. highly intentional, with enough time to think and act on multiple emails) or in between other meetings where I focus exclusively on ‘requires action’ and ‘action immediately’.

Scheduling

I think it’s really important to have a great process for scheduling, and these days it all happens over email. As opposed to calendar links, which are impersonal, error prone and give control of your calendar to anyone with the link, I like to provide available time blocks from constrained periods in my week where I have the energy and focus to be able to do that meeting. The default answer to new meetings should be no, but where it cannot be avoided and my presence is critical, I want to have a system for rapidly sharing availability (Front’s Hummingbird app seems ideal for this, where you can select blocks and copy/paste them into the email body) with someone that results in booked meetings and those emails disappearing from my inbox.

Other Thoughts

I don’t think having ulterior goals (e.g. reducing email volume) really makes sense if the above system is applied. It means I am always focused on the most important things. It provides off ramps (e.g. delegate, resource, ‘updates’ only, toggles for requiring action or consideration) that make sense to me and allow me to be effective if adhered to. It provides transparency to those around me, and allows me to best serve the various stakeholders that depend on me day to day. I prefer to be in my inbox than in a meeting or really anywhere else, it’s when I think my ability to read and write quickly really shines. If you have any questions on how I do this, or suggestions for how to improve this system, please let me know and I will consider it 😃