Email Tyranny: How We Can Reclaim Our Attention At Work

Originally posted at FJWriting.com

If your work day is anything like mine, much of your professional communication and likely ALL of your written communication is done via email. It is the de facto medium of our current economy. We love the ease of it and yet everyone groans about it. We decry it as tone-deaf and easily misconstrued; we rant that its difficult to get clarity, and we grumble that the communications never seem to end.

Let’s state this very clearly:

Email is not the problem.

The problem is how we use it and how accessible we are to it.

The real reason email irritates us is because of its access to us. You wouldn’t tolerate the public library sending you randomly selected books and insisting you read them. Yet we do this very same thing when we keep our email inbox open and accessible all day. Anyone can write in and request your attention. This is a counter-productive habit since in our knowledge economy, your attention is your competitive advantage.

In spite of this, the fact remains, that many of us use our email as a “To-Do” reminder. I did this very same thing for years, relying on my inbox to tell me what needed done on a given day. But I became increasingly frustrated by distractions and interruptions, the never-ending PING, PING, PING! of emails popping up, and the flood of many seemingly random questions and inquiries. Now I attempt to have my email program stay closed the majority of the workday, allowing me to focus on higher value work.

I started to document the different steps and experiments I used to accomplish this. What follows below is a layout of (I hope) practical and actionable tips and habits for dealing with, and better utilizing, email as a tool in your work ecosystem.

11 Experimental Tips for Better Email Use

Below are 11 habits that I have experimented with over the past several years to make more effective (and efficient) use of email, making it work for me as a communication method (instead of having it dictate the work day). This list is not comprehensive and I adapt, revisit, and add to these constantly.

1. I respond less. If you respond less or if you respond more slowly, the majority of individuals will write you less frequently, and typically with only essential questions. It creates the expectation over time that an instant response will not be forthcoming. We need to work on training others to respect our attention (less frivolous questions), as well as manage their expectations.
2. Write fewer emails, writing them longer and more comprehensively. The common rebuttal that I hear to this is that folks will not read long emails and it’s a waste of the writer’s time; our attention spans are now conditioned to be far too short for long-form content. I do two things to combat this misconception: I write readable yet comprehensive emails by reworking the formatting (more on this below). I also take the exact same information that I was going to write in the email, put it into an attached document with the heading “Project Memo”, with a message such as “Hi all, project memo attached regarding issues discussed at our last meeting, let me know if you have edits/questions/clarifications. Thanks.” It’s the exact same written information but if it is in a “Memo”, it gains greater attention and feedback. I’ve witnessed this time and again at work.
3. Take the few seconds to block senders. Set up rules to auto-junk or mark as SPAM certain senders. I am amazed when I see a coworker’s work email inbox flooded with advertisements, coupon specials, and repeated alerts which they delete each day as part of their normal routine. What a waste of time.
4. Do not mix personal and professional email accounts. Free, personal email accounts have been available for decades. Its staggering the amount of personal communication which comes flooding into my coworkers work accounts, causing distraction and mental friction from their work tasks at hand. I try to respect my employer’s facilities and equipment and keep personal email out of my work inbox.
5. Ignore non-urgent and/or non-important emails for at least 48 hrs. After that, jot a quick note to let the sender know you are working on it. Or don’t do anything and see if they ever circle back.
6. Turn off ALL notifications regarding email. No sounds, vibrations, desktop notifications or pop-ups. “YOU’VE GOT MAIL!” was a fun slogan back in the ’90s when the letters in your physical mailbox outnumbered your emails by a ratio of 10-to-1. Now email notifications are a distraction. Yes, I know I have email in my inbox. I ALWAYS have email in my inbox.
7. Compose all of your written communication out of the actual email program; it’s far less distracting when your incoming emails are not in your face. I use a free version of Grammarly and keep a running file titled “Daily Email Log”. Not only do I avoid incoming distractions by being offline, but I get the added benefit of a built-in grammar check, making my finished communication appear more professional.
8. Batch checking your email into several short time slots throughout each workday.* During these several minute sessions, I will open my email, quickly Block/Create Rules/Junk any new undesirable senders that have managed to sneak through. I then delete any email I reasonably can. If the emails are important communication and will require further thought or action on my part I temporarily copy them to my desktop for offline consideration. I then take the remaining emails and divide them into two categories, “Requires Response” and “Archive Everything Else”. File quickly accordingly.
9. Daily “Out of Office” auto-responder notification. I now attempt to remember to place this on my email account each day as the last thing of my daily closeout routine. It simply states I am not in the office and I will respond at the next available time; no other promises. I’ve noticed the people email you less when they realize you’re not sitting at the other end of the Internet pipeline, accessible for their communication. I set the notification to turn off automatically on the following morning. I’m toying with the idea of just leaving it up for days at a time, even as I am in the office…
10. Do not use email as your “To-Do” list. This is a critical point. Email is meant to quickly and easily send and receive written communication. That’s it. It’s not meant to do any other function. The de facto habit that we often fall into is using our email inbox as our task reminder. Which means that you’re trying to organize your thoughts while staring into the most distracting software program in your professional sphere. I combat this by having a written “To-Do” list; it’s hard copy and portable. No cord or software update required and I avoid being distracted by unrelated communications while I’m trying to organize my work or plan my tasks.
11. Don’t have your work email on your phone. Since most communication is not extremely urgent, there’s no reason why email cannot be dealt with at the office or during specific work sessions. Why do we need to immediately know that we’ve been cc’d on Jim’s unclear response to Bob’s non-urgent inquiry? I’ve deleted my work email account from my phone. The only result I could see was that I was less distracted and less stressed.

*I am not (yet) a brand ambassador for Cal Newport, but his tactical thinking on subjects such as email routines have influenced my workday greatly and his writing does warrant checking out.

Changes In Thinking

Decisions Are Primary

You may be thinking that this seems like a lot of effort just to avoid one’s email. However, we not attempting to avoid email altogether, we are looking to make better use of it. All of the points that are listed above are realistic habits which take less time, effort, and cause less distraction than simply leaving your inbox open and your attention available to be hijacked at any moment but someone else’s issue or question, regardless of the relevance to your current work. Your work email is likely available to anyone in the world, but that doesn’t mean your attention should be.

Because we have near instant communication and information, we expect ourselves (and others) to make near-instant decisions. We are convinced that because we can convey information faster we are able to tackle more work because we confuse routing information as “work”. Scanners, printers, or network routers; these devices distribute and duplicate information. Instead of working on our work, we are too often merely managing information. They are two very different things which require different tools and different modes of thinking.

As a knowledge worker, your job is not sending emails; your job is to make decisions. We are paid to take information and experience, provide analysis, planning, input, and then make decisions. This is a critical (and oft-overlooked) distinction and when I had it pointed out to me in Seth Godin’s writings, it dramatically changed how I approached and organized my work.

Email Accessibility

In years prior, when people would email at all hours (late evening, early morning, weekends), regardless of the importance of the topic referenced, I would think, “Ah, a kindred spirit! So dedicated! So on top of their work!”

Now when I notice an email time stamp of 12:31 AM regarding something that could have easily waited until the following morning at the office (a.k.a. everything) I think: “Is this person totally disorganized at their work? Are they having a mental breakdown? Have they been drinking? Should we look at replacing them on the team?”

Do not misunderstand me: I too get the periodic crazy revolving mental loop regarding a work issue which needs to be put in writing, communicated, and placed one step closer to resolution. I too sometimes get up at 12:31 AM and smash away on the keyboard all the things that are clogging up my brain and need to be addressed, handled, clarified, etc. But I send that email to myself. Most of us wouldn’t trust ourselves to fry an egg at 12:31 A.M., why are we thinking we can assist in making important decisions on professional projects at such a time?

Respecting Other People’s Time

As I have become more insistent that I am not accessible to everyone and anyone at any given time, I place a greater emphasis on how I treat other people’s time. I make a concerted effort to not become the distraction or chronic emailer, filling up someone’s inbox and depriving them of their most valuable workplace resource: their mental attention. For non-urgent information or communication, I will write at the end of the email (and mean it), “Please let me know about this when you have a moment.”

I also try to remember to ask myself this question: with a bit of research or effort could I get this information on my own without bothering this person? Often the answer is yes, and it’s even faster than sending a request, clarifying that request, writing back and forth, and then finally getting the desired information. If I take a bit of upfront time I can steer clear of all this useless back and forth and also avoid bothering the other person.

Changes In Action

A Habit of Timing

I make it a point to attempt not to open up my email each work day until roughly 9:30 AM at the earliest. This is not always possible, depending on what stage a project is in, but what I have found is that this timing does several things all at once:

1. Primarily I am less distracted each morning; I can get set up and organize my day (aiming to make my whole day more effective)
2. I can focus on the important work first thing in the day, early in the AM shift, before the inevitable office distractions appear.
3. It places email in its proper place in my mind: as a combination word processor and network router. Emailing is not the work.

Changes In Writing Style and Format

Being cognizant that email is a powerful tool (words do indeed have power) and should not be simply used as a text message conversation, I have begun to utilize 3 specific formats and approaches to professional emails:

1. Emails where I am conveying direction, clarifying a position or decision, or providing input.
2. Emails where I am requesting clarifying information, fact-finding for a pending decision.
3. Emails where I am simply checking in as to status on a deliverable item. These are never more than one line and a “Thank you.”

For #1 and #2, I tend to write longer emails, providing bulleted points of context, or attaching a memo. I have very specific questions or comments, also bulleted for ease of reference to the recipient.

Refilling Our Time

There is another aspect to this email discussion: when I shut down my email and moved away from responding to it all day long, I had to find something else to do. The easy, shallow work of moving information around all day was now replaced with…..with what? You guessed it: the harder, cognitively demanding planning work that we all avoid because, well, it’s hard. I actually had to address the core issues of my work each day and it was challenging to make that switch in my thinking and habits.

Summary

I hope that what’s been described above contains at least a few key points or action items that you can try to better use email in your daily work. It may at first appear like such a minor item in our lives, but workplace studies and research confirm this statement: email is quietly and comprehensively dominating our knowledge work jobs. We need to be aware of this reality and take steps to best preserve our attention and energy for higher value work than simply moving information around. We are both paid for, and capable of, much more in our professional pursuits.

Moving forward:

Do you find email to be a constant distraction, keeping you busy without being productive?

Do you have any tips, habits, or tactics that you have effectively utilized to minimize this distraction?

Originally published at fjwriting.com on July 3, 2018.