51: Email is Overrated

Join me in this riff about email handling and getting your important work into the world.   Episode Takeaways * Stop the flood of email and regain your sanity by putting your email client in “offline mode” * Deal with what you have * Turn it back on when you’re ready * The world will not stop spinning or come to an end if you don’t check your email for an hour or two * Disable all notifications for new messages * Set the interval that your client checks for mail to never or a high number… you’ll go looking for new messages soon enough * Disable email on your phone for the weekend and see how it feels * Over a week, take note of the number of times an instant reply was truly required * Push against the norms and see what you can get away with * Is it a negative voice or gremlin that’s telling you that you must check your email * Harness that level of clarity you have first thing in the day * If you wake up with something negative rattling around in your head, write about it. Don’t worry about complete sentences * Avoid checking and reading the news first thing * How many of the things you read about can you really respond to or do anything about them? * Does it matter if you find out about it later? * How often are you responding to email out of fear of something going wrong or “really bad will happen” versus a conscious activity * We train people over time how we will respond to to email * This creates an expectation that we will continue in the same way * Create a definition of “what really bad” would be for you to get in “trouble” and then reflect on the chances of it happening * You probably have a track record and history and “deposits in the bank” that mean you can probably afford to goof up * How much your email checking habit is an ego thing? * Are you solving everyone else’s problems and avoiding your own by mowing through your email? * Set a timer and a fixed period of time… preferably a kitchen timer or sand timer (NOT your iDistracter) * Experiment with the notion of intentional imperfection and see what you learn * Deep Work by Cal Newport on the importance of focusing and going deep when we work * Put your thoughts and learnings out into the world! Even if it feels scary Credits * Hallon by Christian Bjoerklund * Cold Funk by Kevin MacLeod * Original photo source All songs licensed under Creative Commons