Remember that iconic voice from AOL that came on the scene in 1989? “You’ve got Mail.” People would rush to their computers, eager and excited to find out who was sending them a message. Thirty plus years later the average worker checks their email 11 times an hour. One 2019 study estimates the average worker was sending and receiving 126 business emails a day. One message every 4 minutes! Between the voices, dings, vibrations, and notifications we have fallen victim to classical conditioning much like Pavlov’s dogs. Our attention is diverted, and we drop what we are doing and instantly respond as our “mouths salivate.” For a multitude of workers email is “eating their lunch.”

The problem isn’t the tool, it’s how we use it. One of my favorite writers is Cal Newport author of Deep Work, Digital Minimalism, and most recently A World without Email “reimagining work in an age of communication overload”.  All three books heavily impacted and changed my work habits, workflow processes, and leadership style. The result has been clearer and more effective communication, more focused attention, focused work, and increased productivity.

Email spread into the workplace in the 80’s and 90’s. It created an unexpected underlying workflow, that ended up determining how events and work efforts unfolded each day. Not at all a positive or desirable outcome in my opinion. Email devalues focused work, undervaluing concentration. Switching attention constantly slows our mental processing. Much study and research has revealed the negative impact this has had in our lives and in the workplace. Email is not your job!

Relying on email is terrible way to attempt to track and manage projects, or workflow. I’m not advocating the elimination of email, but it certainly needs a major overhaul for how and when to use it. Email is for disseminating information not conversation. Collaboration doesn’t effectively occur through email. And it’s certainly not the place to emote or vent. We can all recall times when we or someone has misread or misinterpreted an email that has resulted in a major misunderstanding, conflict, lack of trust and damaged relationships.

The sheer volume of email communication we must cope with is stressful enough. We often struggle to discern the important from the incessant messages we receive each day. The result is a fragmented workday, loss of focus and concentration.

I have transitioned and eliminated much of the email traffic at work with my team internally to Microsoft Teams. Doing so has greatly reduced response time and increased responsiveness. I will share in a future post how I transitioned from email to a much more fluid communication process resulting in better workflow and productivity.

Here are a few ideas I’ve used to wrestle the email monster to the ground that you may want to consider. 1) Check email only two to three times per day. For a period of three months, I posted an auto response message that indicated when I checked and responded to email. I generally read and respond to email in the morning, after lunch, and before leaving work for the day. 2) Decouple your work email account from your personal phone. If you have a work phone that’s different. But if your company isn’t paying for your phone, why put your work email account on it? 3) Aim for zero emails in your inbox at the end of each workday.4) Change your default to calendar mode and turn off notifications. 5)When drowning in email (paperwork) use the RAFT system and strive to handle an email only once. When responding to an email take one of four actions: Refer it, Act on it, File it, or Trash it. Get on the raft!

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