3 Methods To Processing Your Email

Face it. Email sucks. We have to do it. Unless you're ... nope, pretty much everyone we know has to deal with email. It doesn't mean it has to kill you though, and these are just 3 of many methods I've found to address this hassle. Once you get your way down, Email can become productive again. I've crushed thousands of emails a day before and felt like I was a rockstar. WRONG. I was procrastinating. Picking dopamine hits, and shooting them up one email at a time. You lose time, and energy, and do a disservice to the goal your email is serving.

1. Email Bankruptcy

I highly advise against this, but let's face it. Sometimes one might have an interest in scorching the earth emails. There is some logic to this method though, that could help some. The one area that I can see this working in is ... if something is THAT important if someone really wants to get ahold of you, and you just need a reboot. Then select all and archive. I always recommend archiving. It's close to deleting and will save you more than you would ever know.

2. The Triple D's

Now don't go there, that is against the terms of service. Get your mind out of the gutter. It's Do, Delegate, and Delete.

1. If you can do it in 5 mins or less do that action the email needs you to do.
2. If you have someone you can delegate this email to, then delegate it. Smash that forward button, and trust that it gets done. If you hired them, trust them. Don't dwell on it or if they didn't do it. You can fire that person or retrain them later, but this is about email, not management styles.
3. The last is delete, and as I said above, I'm not a fan of deleting, anything, ever. It's not hoarding. It's business. There is always going to be someone, sometime, that claims you said something in an email that isn't true or whatever. No one likes their #ss bit or anything bit. So archive it. It just fits with the D's reference. The point is if the email really isn't important, even if it's in your belief, never going to be important, delete (archive) it.

3. 1 hour is your Power

Email can suck the ever-living life out of you. It can be a pit of despair beyond repair. I don't care what email client you're using and how Super or Human it claims to be. You can spend your entire day, week, or months in email triage, if you're trying to get this true inbox zero. Which will last all of 2 seconds. So pick an hour, and put it on your calendar. Put it on your calendar. Don't negotiate, don't rationalize, and don't self-splain your way out of it. Put the hour of power on your calendar. So spend a super-duper f'ing focused hour, every day, on your inbox. That's it. Then close it and don't look at it again for the rest of the day (or night, or just one peak before you go to bed). The emails will still be there, and if you're freaking out about this, and this email was THAT important, it should have been addressed in your power hour. There are tons of ways to flag, folder, boomerang, return, time, or whatever to prioritize that hour.