New year’s resolutions are my favorite thing to look back on, year after year. What was I resolving to do 10 years ago? Did I actually resolve anything? Is there anything that feels especially strange? That makes me laugh? That seems woefully naive?
Email is a topic of many of my resolutions. And email continues to be the dominant way I communicate at work. (Perhaps your work has moved beyond floods of email and onto other platforms like Slack or Microsoft Teams. Perhaps you have your own resolutions for using these platforms efficiently!)
In general, I like email. I especially like it for extended correspondence with colleagues, friends, and family. When people treat email like letters—albeit with less gap between responses—email still feels familiar and friendly to me.
But that’s not how everyone uses email! I fall short of my desire for correspondence all the time and resort to messages like, “Please do X by DATE.” In other words, we’re using email like a to-do list. (Perhaps we should all resolve to use actual to-do list applications rather than use email this way.) And I manage my email as a series of tasks—reply to this, flag that, file these…
The result is that email becomes like a sick slot machine. I’m pulling the lever to get a new set of numbers, hoping for a match. Only in this case, I’m checking for new messages to get a new task, something that I can do right now. All this comes at the expense of long-term projects, work that requires deep thinking, extended focus, and time to step away without something else to fill our minds in the interim. And the more we play that sick slot machine, the more we train our brains to focus on the here and now. We lose our ability to focus on bigger tasks.
So what’s the resolution? How can we resolve this dilemma? (I like how “resolution” means both something we plan to do and also a solution to an issue.) Here’s what I’m trying.
- Email is a task itself and something to schedule. I’m returning to something I resolved (and failed to keep doing) last year—Checking my email three times a day. Right away in the morning, I check email to help plan my day. At midday, I return to email again to send needed messages and make sure I’m not missing something urgent. (I wish others would resolve to not send something urgent over email. I should resolve to do the same.) And then I check it at the end of the day to plan out tomorrow and make sure I’ve tidied things up so I can start fresh in the morning.
- Move work out of email. But how and where? Most email exchanges are not the correspondence I lauded above. Instead, they are more like a chat. If your correspondent uses a chat program, what about moving it there? And while we bemoan meetings that could have been emails, what about celebrating the reverse? Can we get out of an extended exchange by talking about it instead? How about calling the person? Ask them to call you back via text if they don’t answer. The less you reply to email, the fewer replies you will receive.
- Use “automatic replies” for things other than out of the office messages. Looking ahead at my calendar for 2024, I have few meetings on Fridays. What I’d like to do is protect that time and use it for only big projects that require dedicated focus. And to support this, I’m considering setting an automatic reply to say, “I am busy working on X and may not get to your email today. I look forward to replying to you on Monday.” You can always include another way of contacting you, like phone calls, texts, or chat, if the issue is urgent.
- Just don’t reply right away! Does your workplace have a policy for timely replies? If they do, I’m guessing it’s something like “within 2 days.” That means a message you read on Monday can sit until Wednesday without you violating the policy. There are other norms to consider that may prescribe a faster response, but norms develop based on how people behave. Try waiting till tomorrow to reply to a message received today. Maybe good things will result.
All these actions add up to the maxim “Be the change that you want to see in the world [of email].” And if that change is to spread, it may also make sense to tell other people how you are choosing to use email. What if you add details about your email use to your signature block? Below your name, perhaps something like, “This year, to help my focus, I’m being strategic in my emailing. I’m limiting the amount of times I check my email each day, and I’m trying to use other communication media for projects. As such, I may call you, text you, or chat with you, rather than replying directly to your email. I’m hoping this adds up to a more productive, healthier, and happier 2024, and I encourage you to try the same thing!”
I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stick with this plan. In the 20 minutes I’ve spent writing this post, I’ve been tempted to check my email a couple times, have replied to 3 text messages, and scheduled a meeting (on a protected Friday, no less!). But I’ve also enjoyed the focus that writing brings and feel inspired to once again resolve to find a resolution to my use of the email slot machine.
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