Take the stress out of email

EMAIL. There’s always a lot of it and it’s so easy to feel swamped.

I recently read an incredible book called "Unsubscribe" by Jocelyn Glei. It’s a clever, quick read about the psychology of email and how to diffuse “email anxiety” so that you can be most productive.

There is TONS of gold in this book, but here are a few of my favorite ideas that helped take the stress out of my relationship with email:

The myth of "Inbox Zero"

• The more email we write the more email we receive, so achieving "Inbox Zero" is a game we can never win. Accepting this reality is the first step to help ease feelings of email overload.

Let go of email urgency guilt

• If we picture our email inbox as a stack of letters on our desk, would we be expected to respond to every letter in one sitting? No. Not everything is urgent.

Quickly checking your email may cost you more time than you think

• If you are doing something that requires intense creative focus (practicing, writing, etc.) and stop to check your email, it takes at least 25 minutes for your brain to refocus to where you were before you interrupted yourself.

A program that prevents distractions for you (this really changed my life!)

• Inbox Pause! This program allows you to send emails but pause incoming messages to prevent distractions. We’ve all opened our computers to do something only to find ourselves lost in our inboxes 30 minutes later!

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Stay tuned for my upcoming bloglette posts about how gratitude can train confidence and why less sleep is the enemy of productivity! Please share and comment if you feel so inclined:) I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Unsubscribe

By Jocelyn K. Glei