106 - Email Ninja
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Emails can be such a point of stress in our lives because they just keep piling up and they're a complete time suck. I cannot tell you how many days I've wanted to check my email real quick.
Do I get any other work done? No.
Is my inbox actually cleared up? No.
I just spent all day in my inbox and I have nothing to show for it, and there are about seven other super legitimate, important things I would rather be doing.
While I was running my photography business and running my team, we had to get an email system in place and I turned my inbox into a little game. Over the years I have put a lot of disciplines into place and match that up with this little game that I play and all of that has really helped me to get control over it and not feel as overwhelmed, but instead, feel more like an #EmailNinja.
Today, I'm going to teach you how to be an Email Ninja, too!
For the full episode, hit play above or read through it below.
There are three practices I'm going to teach you today that are going to help you get your email inbox under control:
Set solid email boundaries.
Learn to be an Email Ninja.
Set a Friday goal.
set solid boundaries
So let's talk about the boundaries first. The first thing I really want to encourage you to do is to check your email once or twice a day MAX.
Set the time, so maybe it's 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM and you only check them for one hour each. Maybe you have a timer or you just really keep an eye on the clock, but you don't go over one hour.
When I stick to this, I increase my productivity so much. It allows me to plan my day before I open my inbox. I do all these important things before I actually see what is going to distract me or respond to what's urgent. I've already laid out what's important in my day, and then I teach my clients my work and my personal boundaries by saying, "Hey, I only check emails these times every day.”
Another boundary you can set is to simply take emails off of your phone in order to really stick to these email checking times. I think that it's helpful to take the app completely off your phone or instead deleting the app, one thing that I've done, because sometimes I do need access to it real quick for information. I just delete all notifications. So I never ever get a little red, like new email sign on my phone. And then you can hide your email app in a folder or on a page that just is out of the way. And you don't see it. This way, you only access your emails during this times that you've set for you yourself.
Another boundary is for you to keep your mail app closed on your desktop computer. So when you're working, you don't have the app open all the time. So that being doesn't happen all throughout the day to distract you when you're not checking your emails, you're not going to hear that. You're not going to feel that sense of urgency to check it and then totally get sucked in. That way you really can focus on your important work and have that fulfilling feeling at the end of the day, that you did the things you set out to do.
Another boundary for you to set your email signature, make it automatic on every single email that you send out, you want it to reflect your email habits too, to your clients, or even to family and friends so that they know, Hey, she's not tied to her computer all the time.
I feel like when I was was working in photography, many clients and brides really expected their emails to be answered immediately. I mean, within seconds. Sometimes they would follow up and be like, “Hey, did you get this?,” like an hour later. So by having this in my email signature—I only respond to emails Mondays through Thursdays at 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM—it helped them realize, “Oh yeah, okay, well she probably has a lot of other things that she's doing and she'll get to me soon.”
This just gently reminds them in a professional way: you have boundaries and you have a personal life. I feel like some people forget that. Like, I'm not going to answer your emails on the weekends. Sometimes I would even say like, “Hey, I reserve weekends for photographing weddings and being with my family, if you really need to reach me for an emergency, like here's my cell phone number.” And nobody ever really did that. Like once you outline those boundaries in an email signature, it really helps them, their expectations of you and your expectations of them. Win-win.
Okay, so those are just some examples of some healthy boundaries that you can set for your email so that it doesn't totally suck away your time and your life.
learn to be an #emailninja
What I mean by that, this is the little game that I like to play, okay?
You set an hour time limit.
You use a little post-it note, you write #emailninja at the top or Email Ninja.
And then you write in the time that you start and how many emails you have in your inbox.
And then the time that you are committing to finish your emails and how many emails you have left.
So mine will say—this little post-it note on my desktop computer:
#EmailNinja
10 o'clock : 74 emails
11 o'clock : __ emails
The thing is, I want to see if I can get to zero. Rarely do I ever get to zero, but you know what? Just having the time limit and seeing how quickly I can go through them and knock as many as I can out, it really helps me be super efficient and focused with my email inbox.
I don't know if you've ever heard of Parkinson's law, but this totally applies here. So, Parkinson's law dictates that a task will swell and perceived importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.
It is the magic of the imminent deadline.
So, basically if you give yourself three hours to go through your email, inbox is going to take you every bit of that three hours.
If you give yourself five hours to complete a project, it's going to take those five hours.
But if you give yourself ONE hour—if someone said “I'm going to pay you $10,000 to get your email inbox to zero in the next hour”—do you think you'd be focused? Do you think you'd do it? Yeah. And that's Parkinson's law. Because if you give yourself a deadline and try to get down to however many emails you can in that amount of time, you will get so much further than you ever have.
I love playing the Email Ninja game. Sometimes I'll even put in headphones and listen to instrumental music to block out everything else. And I'll have a timer that's like a visual timer that I can see, so that I'm super focused, and then at the end, I write in how many emails are left.
Then the next day, when it's time to check my email again, I see if I can beat that. I’ll see if I can get it down even more.
That is how you're an #EmailNinja. And if you do that once a day, imagine how awesome your inbox would look and imagine how awesome the rest of you your day would look. You would get so much other stuff done! It's amazing.
Set a Friday goal
Now I know, realistically, it's not realistic to get your email inbox down to zero every single day. So what I want you to do is think of a number that makes you feel like:
“Okay, I can enter the weekend knowing my email inbox is at 30.”
or “I have 15 emails in my inbox.”
or maybe you get crazy amounts of emails and you're like, “if my email inbox is down to a hundred by Friday, I'll feel good.”
Or maybe because you're new at this, your goal for this Friday is like getting it from 2000 emails to 500 and that'll feel good for you, but the next Friday's goal will to be to get it from 500 to 100.
And that's that next Friday’s goal. And then the next Friday and the on-going Friday’s is like 20, 20 emails feels good
Every single Friday, you have to come up with a number in your inbox that allows you to enjoy your weekend without feeling stressed.
When I was running my business, my number was 30. If I could get my inbox to under 30 on a Friday, I felt caught up enough to enjoy my weekend.
So what is your number? What is your Friday goal?
A couple of other tips for you is you have to stay focused. This is how you actually do this:
You cannot answer phone calls while you're answering emails.
You cannot answer text messages.
You cannot look at social media.
You have to set your timer, set a clock, and don't look at anything, but your inbox for the time that you have allotted for yourself, you can reach your goal.
If you stay focused and something totally amazing happens when you can track your progress and watch that little number go down, it feels really good.
Now, a couple other questions I get from people:
Q: What about all these subscription emails that I get the annoying ones from all these different companies that I'm subscribed to? I'm part of like a thousand email lists!
You need to write down this website address: unroll.me.
And if you have a totally out of control inbox right now, this is the first step you need to do. Go to unroll.me, and literally it will bring up everything you are subscribed to—It's kind of amazing—and you just go through and systematically unsubscribed from anything you don't want to be subscribed to. And then you can roll up the ones that you want to be subscribed to into one email that you get like once a week, it's remarkable.
Q: What about like 7,000 emails in my inbox?
Well, you might want to declare email bankruptcy right now. That means you might just want to delete all the emails out of your inbox, or at least the ones from like 2018 and older, just drag them into the trash.
Then you can even change your email signature saying like, “Hey, I just declared email bankruptcy. I deleted like 5,000 emails. If you have an urgent need for me, please reach back out to me.”
It'll come back around.
Q: Where do you put on your emails? Do you delete all of them?
Okay. This is a great question.
I do delete a lot of the ones that I answer. Like if it's something that's done and I don't need any information from it, I will delete it.
But I actually have a really great filing system and most mail apps, whether it's Gmail or—I don't even know anything other than Gmail—you can create it folders and just drag your emails into them. I think I have about like 15 to 20 different folders for my work, and then maybe like eight folders for my personal life. One folder for each kid and their schools and their notifications. For work, I have different things like emails I send out to my list, marketing, collaborations that I do.
I can't tell you how to make your folders, but I will say every time you feel like you get an email where you need to keep the information in that email and you don't know what to do with it, make a folder for it and drag it over to that folder.
It can be your kid's name if it has to do with your kid. It can be a work project. I mean, whatever it is, I have a Work & Play Podcast folder for anything it has to do with the podcast—I drag it in there. So you're the only one who can come up with that, but you can kind of build it as you're cleaning up your inbox.
Q: What kind of notifications do I have personally?
I mean, on my phone, I have the mail app, but all notifications are turned off. I don't have any notifications on my phone other than text messages. That's the only thing I get notified for. No Instagram notifications, nothing. It's just too distracting.
On my computer. I usually keep my mail app quit, so I never see it. But when it's open, I will get notifications of a new email.
Q: Lastly, do you have someone help you manage your inbox?
I do. I actually do. And I did, when I was working in photography, I could not keep up with everything. I had a studio manager who managed all of the emails, the new emails coming in, and only the ones that had to be for me were the ones that were saved for me.
Now I have someone working for me. She knows that I do not have time to really quickly get back to people because I'm a full-time mom right now. So she answers all of the really urgent ones. And then she will just send me a message on Slack if something needs my immediate attention to which really helps. And then I'll still go back in and do my #EmailNinja clean out every once in awhile.
Full disclosure: do I do this perfectly? No.
When I had consistent childcare and work hours in my business, I will be the first to admit I was a boss at my emails, but now I'm relearning my Email Ninja times. I feel like I'm realizing I need to prioritize this like once a week to feel on top of things, I'll just do my email Ninja thing one time a week. That'll keep me on top of the most important things, but throughout this first trimester of my pregnancy, this has really fallen behind.
The bottom line is this, I want to be honest with you and tell you that because in order for it to work, you have to do the work. And you also can own up to the fact that like you have to make time for the hour to do the Email Ninja thing. You have to give yourself grace if you're in a different season. If you have the ability to do this, it will work for you. That is what I have found. If you have the ability to change this into a game, to set these healthy boundaries, it will work. And I feel so accomplished and on top of my email inbox, when I do it in this way. My communication is really good and healthy, but I just wanted to be transparent and say I don't do this perfectly all the time, but when I do put in the work, it really does work.
So I hope it's helpful for you. I hope that you become an email Ninja.
Maybe you don't adopt all of my practices—I hope you do, because I think they all work, but maybe you don't do all of them.
Maybe you just take notifications off your phone.
Maybe you just do unroll.me, and that's really helpful to you.
Maybe you just work through it a little bit at a time until you get your inbox into a manageable level.
Maybe you implement the folder system.
All of those things will really help you just get into a new systematized groove with your inbox.
I hope that this relieves a little bit of the stress in your life regarding your emails, so that you feel like you were in control of your emails and they are not in control of you. No more wasted days because of your email inbox from now on.
Jim Rohn said, "Either run the day or the day runs you." I'm going to modify that into an email version of his quote,
“Either run your emails, or your emails run to you.”
Thanks for listening, and I'll catch you next time.
