Many of us live in our email client and chat tools all day, and think nothing of it. After all – we’ve got to stay informed and appear connected. But spending all day waiting for input is a bit like obsessively tracking your stock portfolio’s rise and fall. Unless you’re a day trader, this isn’t likely going to help you make good financial decisions. In fact, up-to-the-second updates are rarely what we need to make good decisions, and the same is true with your digital communication channels.
I’ve found the key in improving your relationship with email and chat is the realization that the majority of what arrives in your inbox is noise – your job is to separate the signal from it. But the only way to do this efficiently is to maintain some distance from your inbox. Simply reacting to messages as they come in means you will treat everything with similar weight.
You start treating noise as if it were signal.
Here are a few tactics I’ve picked up to help avoid this:
- Schedule your email inbox management time like meetings on your calendar. And then don’t touch your inbox any other time of the day.
- Disable push notifications on your phone and computer for email apps. If this makes your “what about emergencies!” alarm go off, give people other ways to get in touch like text or phone.
- Treat your inbox like a waiting room, not a “to do” list – move emails that need to be actioned into a separate folder, and archive the rest of the noise. Only check the inbox when you have designated time to triage. Otherwise, just chew through your actionable email folder.
Of course, there’s many other benefits to modifying your habits like this. For one – you’re much more likely to write considered, thoughtful responses to messages, even upsetting ones, and less likely to send hot headed, instant reactions. That benefit alone is worth giving your inbox some breathing room.