Unlocking email zen: don't waste 80 hours this year

I was recently interviewed for an upcoming summit on productivity, content, and AI, and one of the topics we touched on was email.

Email is amazing I write this newsletter, I use it for personal and business uses, but I’m the first to admit it can be overwhelming IF not managed correctly.

Today I’m going to dive into a few areas that can help you get the most out of email while saving you time and effort (and your focus) in the process.

The Issue With Email Inboxes

To me, the issue isn’t with email, it’s with the inboxes.

They haven’t kept up with the times. Gmail definitely improved things but now that spam has (mostly) been handled, we’re dealing with a “new” issue - “infobesity”.

I’ve been a victim of going into my inboxes in years past to do one thing, only to realize 15 minutes later I forgot why I went to my email in the first place…

I’m not the only one - Harvard Business Review says that 21 minutes per day on average wasted, that’s over an hour and a half a week, or over 80 HOURS per year.

What Worked, What Works, For Me

There’s so much information out there, we need a way to quickly triage email or have it sorted so that we only see what we need to see, when we need to see it.

In the past I had created my own filters in Gmail, which mostly worked, but it was time consuming, manual, and broke from time to time. Not ideal.

My first brush with 3rd party automation in the email space was with Unroll.me. This let me quickly triage emails, more easily deal with unsubscribing, and other one off actions that I had to deal with…but it didn’t keep me out of the inbox or arrange things any differently.

SaneBox was the next tool that I came across, and to be honest, I’ve been a paying customer for several years now. This was my first email tool I came across that made a fundamental difference.

It automatically set up a few folders, segmented out the important stuff, and left my inbox impressively clean without “false positives”. Combining that with only showing 10 emails at a time in my inbox really helped me out.

There’s now some other email systems, native or otherwise, that can help you out - Superhuman and Hey.com come to mind. I recently started using Hey but don’t have a full report ready on it.

Recommended

What Should You Do?

If email is a pain point for you, or you now realize that you’re a bit behind when it come to the email efficiency game, what should you do?

1. First, identify what your issue is - going down the rabbit hole? Overwhelmed? Too distracted?

2. Check out several tools and watch a couple videos of how they work. It’s better to consider multiple options instead of just one.

3. Compare the results vs your original setup. Is it better? Does it work for you? Give it 30 days and then make the choice whether to stick with it.

Taking the time to consider multiple options will help you out in the long run even though it might take up a little more of your time.

Extra Extra

• Need more email tips? Here’s two: Put your phone upside down and on silent to avoid email notifications + schedule time to check your email throughout the day as needed.

• Writing by hand has more benefits than previously thought - especially for children.

That’s all for today, stay productive!