How to Master Email Management and Take Your Day Back
Email: love it or hate it, it is still the king of communication forms. Mark Cuban recently stated that he still prefers email to meetings, and uses it constantly. He spends the majority of his day (based on his account to Business Insider) reading and answering emails. It seems crazy that a high-profile billionaire has such high praise for email (and spends that much time with it). But his reasons make sense. Its asynchronous nature allows him to answer on his timeline. He can provide responses directly to the people who need it. And, he is still making deals via email. If you have the next great idea, you may be able to skip Shark Tank and just send Mark an email. He’ll likely read it.
Since we are not Mark Cuban, how we manage email is a little different. This space continues to evolve, and email applications make promises to help you manage it better. I have found that there is no single way to make this easier for everyone. It is why there are so many email applications out there. It is why some of my most read articles revolve around managing email better. It is a constant battle. But there are ways you can continue to build good processes and support mechanisms to prevent you from being overwhelmed by your humble email inbox. Let’s explore a few ideas.
Manage What You Can
We cannot control all the email that comes to us, all the time. But we do have more control over it than we may think. Most of us manage at least two email inboxes, a work email and a personal email box. That provides twice the opportunity to be overwhelmed. It feels worse in the work inbox, but our personal inboxes can get unruly also.
Your Work Inbox
Oddly, one of the best ways to keep your inbox at a manageable level is to review what is in your ‘sent’ folder. The more you send, the more you get back. That is both good and bad. If you are sending an email and need a response, that is good news. If you are blasting out a bunch of emails for information purposes and don’t necessarily need a response, this can end up being more of a hinderance than a help. As you plan your emails, review whether you:
need to send it at all, or can it be discussed in person later?
can note that you do not require a response.
send a simple text which may be easier to manage versus email.
use any other form of communication tool that gets the information you need. These aren’t foolproof, and there are other factors involved, but I have always found that the days I had the fullest inbox, were the ones where I sent the most emails as well.
Your Personal Inbox
If I look at what comes to my personal email inbox, the vast majority of it I can classify as not important, and almost always not urgent. In an Eisenhower Matrix, that moves all of that to ‘delete’. I probably won’t do that, but what can be done is to really look at what is coming in regularly to you and decide whether it still should or not. This is where using many of the now built in email application tools come in handy. Can you automate moving emails from specific senders to a folder that can be viewed at any other time? How many can just be moved to ‘spam’ or ‘blocked’? Do you really need to know about that sale at that one store you bought something from two years ago? Be brutal in evaluating what is hitting your inbox. If you are still a little unsure, move to that ‘spam’ folder or a ‘check later’ folder (automatically) and then check back in a month or so.
All this applies to your work inbox as well. I know I get a lot of ‘spam’ email in the work inbox too, so applying these ideas there can help reduce a lot of clutter that distracts us when we are busiest as well.
Careful With Unsubscribe
The tempting button of ‘unsubscribe’ can have consequences that few of us expect. It can trigger more emails. Often, spammers will just cast out a bunch of emails to see if there is anyone on the other end. Your response of ‘unsubscribe’ can indicate that it is an active email account. While you may not receive another email from that exact email sending, they may use that ‘confirmation of active email’ on the other end to sell to other email spammers.
If you are unsubscribing to a known business or account that you signed up for, using the unsubscribe link within the email is probably OK. But for unsolicited emails you receive, you may be better off setting up a rule or automation within your email application to simply move that email every time to the trash. This is where spam blockers or other sorting tools from email applications or add-ons can come in handy. I have used Sanebox in the past and their ‘Blackhole’ function worked really well. You simply move the email to the ‘Blackhole’ folder, and you never see an email from that sender again. Many of the newer email services allow similar actions to happen, keeping your inbox just a little cleaner.
Understanding AI
Everything is AI right now, so of course it applies to email as well. Apple Mail, Gmail, Outlook all have some sort of AI tool built in. The challenge with using AI is that you need to fully understand what it can and will do for you, versus what it cannot (yet). Quick responses probably make sense. However, I have found typing a quick ‘thank you’ is just as easy to type myself than have AI do it for me. Other responses, still require reading them and making edits.
I do think there is a place for AI in email productivity in its current form, as well as looking ahead to what it can do for us. Today, using AI to help edit or adjust an email draft you’ve written can be helpful. If you’re worked up while typing your response, ask AI to adjust the tone to be a little softer (PSA: Don’t type angry). If you are unsure of how to approach a response, AI can help to get you started as well. I have also found using AI to take your words and re-format it for easier reading can be useful. Those are all ways that it can assist with generating email or responses.
What I’d love to see in the future is AI that can really read through your inbox, sort them in ways that make sense for each user, and then serve them up based on urgency and available time. Having a resource that can triage your inbox and weed out ‘nice to know’ information from ‘need to know’ or ‘action required’ would be a great way to help users out. But that will take time, and AI is still only as good as you train it over time. So there will to be work to do, regardless. There are some AI tools now that make this promise, I just haven’t seen them work to the degree I’d like. But I think that time will be here soon. Superhuman is a common application that comes up when looking for email automations and AI-driven support. It has some limitations on reach, and is expensive ($30/month), but I have read articles or listened to podcasters that really like what it can do. It starts to come down to what are you willing to pay. And will these tools really do what you need them to do.
Email, while frustrating at times, remains a foundation of communication. It is still wildly popular, even if most people say they hate it. So it isn’t going away anytime soon. Managing all of your inputs (email, messages, Slack, Teams chats etc.) can get unruly quickly, so nothing replaces the need for setting boundaries and establishing your expectations around use cases and timing. Not everything can be equally important. Help your team and others understand how you can work collaboratively, and not overwhelm everyone. Email can be managed, but it still requires some effort to get it to a place that works for you, rather than against.
How are you addressing your current email situation?
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