Part of the problem
with the stress of email is that we’re so used to it, we are often convinced
that it isn’t there. It’s hard to recognize the magnitude of the stress we’re
under until we’re not under it anymore. I often speak with people in my engagements
who say, “Yes, I have thousands of messages in my email inbox, but who cares? I
know what’s been dealt with.” This means they are using their inbox for
storage. But your inbox is not for storing messages; it’s for receiving and
processing messages.
Let’s consider for a minute your physical mailbox at your home or office. I know that a lot of snail mail isn’t important anymore, but if you’re old enough to remember when everything important came in the mail, or if you can imagine the world before electronic communication, when everything was delivered as physical mail, let’s do a little exercise.
Try this
- Read
every message as it comes in, or as soon as you can.
- If
it’s definitely junk, delete it.
- If
it doesn’t require a reply, leave it in your inbox and move on to the next
message.
- If
it needs just a quick reply, send that, leave the message in your inbox,
and move on to the next message.
- If
it needs a lengthier reply or maybe contains other tasks you need to
complete before you can reply, mark it as unread or flag it so you know
you need to deal with it later.
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