Without going over, tell me how many emails the average professional manages every day.
Are you ready?
Now keep in mind this is on average, which means for some people it is way more than that. And this does not even include personal emails.
Throughout the working day, people toggle back and forth between their inbox 4o times per hour. Per hour. Which adds up to 320 times throughout a typical eight-hour workday.
The average office worker spends an astonishing 28% of their working day on email. Twenty-eight percent.
And guess how many emails are considered important? Thirty-eight percent. Which is honestly a lot higher than I would have guessed.
In short, we have a serious email problem. Which, I imagine is no surprise to you.
There are a lot of reasons for this and a lot of implications. The good news is, there are also a lot of tools and strategies to fix it. Today we are going to focus on five of the biggest causes of email overload and one simple strategy that will start to really help you get a handle on your email once and for all.
5 BIGGEST CAUSES OF EMAIL OVERLOAD
1. Incomplete information– Sending out emails without sending all the necessary information almost guarantees that are you going to receive a number of follow up emails requesting the information that you could have / should have sent in the first place. For example, if you send an email to someone that simply states: I’d like to meet with you tomorrow at 1:00, you are essentially inviting the recipient to follow up with an email since you left out so much necessary information. Instead, you can send something like:
Good morning, I’d like to meet with you tomorrow in my office at one o’clock to talk about the new project. The meeting should last no more than 30 minutes. Please bring the X, Y, Z report. We will be the only two people meeting. See you then.
You’ve covered the who, what, when, where, and why. This does not mean the recipient will not have follow up questions but you have eliminated some of the most basic questions by providing all the necessary information.
2. Incomplete response- Closely related to incomplete information is an incomplete response. This happens when somebody sends you an email and you don’t give them all the information they need from you. For example, let’s say someone sends you an email and asks you, Should I bring anything to our meeting today? And you simply respond, Yes. You have technically answered their question but of course have not given them the information they need.
You are not being deposed and you are not on the witness stand. Learn to anticipate what people might need to know, even when they do not ask the question. Will food be served.? Is the room cold? Is there information that might be helpful about parking, access to the space, who will be there, how long it will be? Think of what someone might want to know and let them know so you can minimize the number of back and forth questions and therefore the number of emails you will receive.
This also shows up when someone asks you multiple questions but you only respond to one, forcing them to follow up creating more emails. The goal is to minimize the back and forth to help yourself (and the other person) by giving a complete response the first time. This includes checking that you have attached something that you were supposed to have attached. Outlook and other mail servers have protections you can turn on to help notify you if you have said you are attaching something but there is in fact no attachment. Take advantage of the tools your email provider has for you.
3. Lack of follow through- This is a major culprit that just snowballs resulting in more and more emails the more you do not respond. As your inbox grows, the more emails you do not respond to which results in more emails asking why you are not responding. This can spiral quickly if you do not get a hold on it. We will get to our one big strategy below but to help with this one, a couple of tips to try.
First, be clear about expectations on response time especially with people in your own organization. What is the expected email response time? One hour? One day? One week? Does it depend? Make sure this is shared and not assumed because we all have our own ideas and we all think our own idea is right and known. Be clear and come to an agreement on those expectations.
Second, some people wait to respond until they have the answer which sometimes can take a really long time. They know they are working on it but to the sender, they have no idea what is happening because they have not heard anything. Be sure to communicate what is happening and let the sender know when they can except the answer.
Finally, stay on top of your deadlines. If you have promised to send something by a certain date (which you need to keep track of) and you are not going to be able to keep that deadline, be proactive about notifying the person. When that date comes and goes and you have not responded, you are going to get what is likely now a heightened response asking what is going on.
4. Emails that should have been meetings– We joke a lot about meetings that should have been emails, but there are a lot of emails that should be meetings. If a situations is too complex, too delicate, requires too much back and forth, has too many people on the email chain or simply has too many responses, it can save you a lot of those emails by picking up the phone or setting up a meeting to discuss the situation rather than navigating through the proverbial sea of emails floating through you inbox.
5. Finally, scheduling– the absolute bane of my existence. Scheduling by bouncing emails back and forth takes up a lot of email and then the inevitable reschedule takes up even more. This is made worse by people only offering one time slot rather than suggesting more than one. This is also made worse by people not choosing (Anything is fine!) out of a well-intentioned desire to be amenable but a result of needing yet more emails to make the thing happen. The best tip here is to eliminate the tedious back and forth and commit to using shared calendars or popular scheduling software like Calendly, Acuity or a host of others and save yourself countless emails in this one easy step.
THE ONE EASY FIX to getting a hold of your email once and for all is to set aside time to focus on your email rather than responding to each email that pops up or pings. A major reason for your email overload is the extra work you create by having to respond to extra emails because you hastily respond while in the middle of something else. Also, it takes on average 90 seconds to “recover” from each email you read or write so if you are repeatedly doing this while in the middle of another task, this back and forth is affecting your other work because it is taking away your focus from both the emails and the other work you are doing. You are not multitasking. You cannot multitask. None of us can. Our brains do not work that way.
The first step is to shut off the popups. Shut off the notifications. Take email off your phone. Stop toggling 40 times per hour. The back and forth is not helping.
The next step is to set aside dedicated time throughout your day to go through your emails and focus only on that. You will likely need to play around with how long you need, what time(s) of day, and how many times is best. Experiment and see what works best for you. Don’t give up when it is not absolutely perfect because nothing ever will be. Give it time and work through the inevitable bumps. Find what works well- not perfectly- and start to notice the positive difference. Resist the urge to go back to your old ways when it gets uncomfortable or difficult. Work through the discomfort to get to the other side of a more manageable, efficient, and effective email life.
This may seem simplistic but it absolutely works. It is not magic and it will not solve everything but it will make a huge difference in effectively managing your inbox.
BONUS TIP– Let’s be honest, a lot of times we create more work and headache for ourselves including with our email. Let’s stop doing that. In addition to the tips above, one strategy that has worked really well for me is recognizing those situations where I do not need someone’s input or approval and learning not to seek it. Instead, I have learned to extend an offer for input but not hold myself up by waiting for it. In these cases, I will word my email like this: I will be turning the report in at four o’clock on Thursday. If you have any additional edits, I will need them by two o’clock Wednesday. Otherwise I will send the draft as is.
This will not work in all situations, of course but if you have the ability where you do not need something from somebody but you are open to it, this is a great way to go about it.
I hope this gave you some concrete ideas of how you can start to get a handle on your email. At the very least, I hope it gave you some hope that you are not destined to a working life filled with an unmanageable email inbox. There is a way out, I promise. The tips in this article are only a start- a great start- but only a start. There are a lot of other tips and strategies that will help. The first step is realizing that it is possible to change. The next step is committing to that change. And the step after that is taking action toward that change. What action are you ready to take?
