[Music] now here's the thing with every single tip in here there's a lot of them and you can pick whichever one you want and just picking and implementing one of the items will make a giant difference in your life just want to start and you can go from there okay so here are the seven tips to help you get control of your email first you do not need to be available 247 now this is a mindset shift so let's start with changing the perspective of having to be available to our investigators 247 people feel Under Pressure to be available 24/7 most people sleep next to their phones and check them last thing at night and first thing in the morning we compulsively check our phones and I have heard clients say that checking in with work emails in the evenings or in the weekend can spoil their entire evening their entire day their entire weekend there's a story of one time where the Star Wars movie got completely destroyed and ruined for us because we checked a work email my sister and I checked our work email on a weekend Oh What a mistake God never do that again if you are going to work after office hours then set up a time to do it as real work right don't just check it on your phone really quick while you're in the middle of doing other things right pick the time let say it's 6 PM after I've done x y and Zed with the kids or whatever I'm going to sit down and do my email as I will tell you this not once in my life have I ever said myself or have I ever heard someone say that they were thrilled with the email that they wrote while they were doing something else quickly on their phone or they were thrilled that they checked their work email on their phone or happy that they checked it at 8:00 p.m.
Or right before falling asleep usually it's an exhausting way to push through a few additional tasks or to mentally brace for the coming day in fact it's usually the opposite most emails sent from the phone or really quickly are confusing or they end up creating more of a problem that they solve or they end up creating an anxiety within us set boundaries around your email times where you simply aren't available and more importantly when work simply isn't available to you number two set specific times to check your email or periodic times where you check your email research has shown that checking email three times a day as opposed to non-stop reduces stress so we know that you will be less stressed out by doing that it also gives you the opportunity to think of email as a specific and discrete task instead of a driver by chore what I mean by that is this think about a grant submission okay how often have you said I'll just check and review this grant really quick and then get back to reconciling my accounts you don't say that because you know that checking a grant requires focus and attention and you need to make decisions about whether something is done correctly or incorrectly and that will require your focus but email you'll check really quick in the middle of something else knowing because we don't think about it that we might get something that triggers that anxiety that then is going to derail our day I'll just quickly check my emails no harm can come from that right but when you do that though your intent is to give it quick attention but what if it's something important or bad news about something or something you can't do anything about right now because you're between meetings and you only have five minutes typically anything that can be answered really quickly in five minutes then can also fit very easily into a schedule time for email taking also only five minutes and in fact that email will probably take less time because your mind will already be in the flow of email thereby making you more efficient at sending emails now sometimes we worry that it will look bad if we don't respond quickly or have other stories in our minds that govern how quickly we respond for that I'd say this think about the days where you have a heavy meeting schedule right then you'd likely have periods where you weren't checking your email anyway now of course in our job all that said in our job Grant deadlines are a thing so it is what it is like all of this is well and good but in time of Grant deadlines there're a thing so there may be times where employers feel that it is necessary for us to be available to conduct work at odd hours that's a symptom of a different issue entirely that we'll definitely get to one day but for now you'll have to figure out what your boundaries are around work invading your time outside of work and adjust your framework accordingly because remember it's not about applying all the things and it's not apply about applying everything on this list at the same time indiscriminately it's really about asking yourself is there a way that I can make this work for me is there a variation that would work how can I make it work for me if not does it uh spark an idea for maybe something totally different that would work for you if it does put it in the comments because I'd love to hear that's not this but it's something that will allow you to have that to accomplish that same goal for me I have periodic times during the day where I go in to check my email and it might not be the same from day to day at the beginning of each week I set my flow time um when I'm setting my schedule and that's when I typically check my email so what I would recommend is uh decide on two or three predetermined time blocks that you're going to check your email and just stick with them for example you might say all right I'm going to check an hour of email time at 11: and then another at 4 maybe want it you know somewhere at 8 whatever it is um Ariana Huffington has a really great rule about email as well to like help create a barrier so you've got your time barrier that says I'm only in to check email at these times or between these times or what have you uh but then she has a couple of additional rules her first is no checking email 30 minutes before bed no checking email first thing in the morning which is that one has changed my life um and no checking email when you're with your family that also changed my life big one so I'm going to recommend an exercise to you this is a journal prompt it's something that I Ed I didn't really at the time I was journaling very heavily I don't always Journal heavily um but I have a couple of questions between this video and um in the future that we'll talk about that basically give you the opportunity need to really think about how certain of these activities impact you right so like you get an email right in this case next time you check your email um at you know if you check it like at random right you're like oh an email's coming I have to check it ask yourself this question right was there anything that was significantly impacted by my checking email tonight did I manage to finish a project get ahead on something did it make me feel better how did me checking my email at this moment make me feel so if you do it during the day in between just give your yourself a moment to check in with yourself because ultimately based off of how you feel based off of each email you get you will decide yourself that you're not getting the value out of checking your email that you thought you would whether it's in the evening or whether it's periodically during the day where it's like where you're letting it interfere with your life not periodically like that you're intentionally going so you'll actually start to realize that for yourself right you'll figure out okay these are the things I don't like about it um you'll realize that when you check your email and it gets you thinking about work now it's making it harder for you to sleep so typically I recommend just put work to bed you know like when I'm done with work for the day I shut down my laptop I put it away I don't have email on my phone work doesn't have permission to occupy space in my home after work hours if you have that and that and you want to have work on your phone uh that's fine just set whatever boundaries you need to around it to protect your time that you're not working now even if you set these boundaries you may still have trouble getting work out of your mind right so even though you're not actually like looking our email you may still be thinking about working like Phantom working which is another challenge and we'll talk about it um in a later conversation um and an interlude video um so what I recommend is set up specific times during the day when you're checking emails so it's protected time for that purpose you don't have to rush through it you won't be distracted it won't distract you from other things and you'll be able to triage it appropriately these things make a huge difference in terms of the effectiveness of your email uh email use now we talked briefly about having email on your phone and how I don't have my email on my phone I recommend that people do not have their email on their phone I'm not entirely sure why we need to have work email on our phones when you know this this there was a time where that would have been an unacceptable unacceptable thing to have work interfere with your home life in that way but you know things have changed right so um now uh I'll tell you if you are not willing to take email off your phone then at least move it to the last screen of your phone write the email thing so you don't have to think about it like you have to really think about it before you launch your email and at least that way it's not like in your face right a few years ago at an event I was speaking at there were like I don't know about a 100 people like it was a lot of people right and and I say that because it you typically can't hear a lot you know in a room 100 people and I'm standing on stage and I said um take your email off your phone and this woman she like she gasped and she was like and held her phone like I was going to take it from her right there like I was like give me your phone you can't have it on there it was it was like Audible and everyone burst out laughing it was I mean it was great it was fabulous you know it gave a really great opportunity for engagement but you know the thing is this if you don't want to take email off your phone you don't have to if you feel like you have to have it do that right um but consider this um there are after work right like so when you're clocking out there's no emails that are so critical that are worth sacrificing whatever you'll sacrifice tonight so that they can't wait until tomorrow uh the idea that you'll get a head start on the day that's a fallacy you'll actually get more done if you just dedicate one hour to cleaning your inbox out in the morning then you will check in your phone for emails while going to the bathroom at 2 a.m.
Checking email less reduces stress as countless Studies have shown okay so that's my recommendation on that one now in terms of um dealing with email once it comes in one of the things that we all know is we get a lot of email that just doesn't need action right so not every email needs action and in fact many of the emails we get are informational and they'll be incredibly useful later on but not at this exact moment some of them might be NIH updates guidance compliance information that are references things that you need to reference later but that are not necessarily things that you're using now remove these from your inbox immediately and put them in the admin folder this will be the place that you'll come back to when you know there's an email with guidance or additional resources that you got three months ago that you didn't need then but will at this moment save your behind so it's a really great place to just dump everything administrative that is that you can just go back to because you know it's there don't hold on to junk either right so this is another one don't hold on to junk delete the automated emails the system generated emails if you have an issue with deleting emails which I by the way do then just don't empty your trash so I basically delete all my emails until my trash gets a certain level of fullness where everything starts to slow down and then I will archive it and move that outside so that it's hidden somewhere it's a PST file and I can go back and get that information if I need to and literally this is just my trash um if I need it I can go back and get it but if I don't need it after a year chances are that I'm not going to need it I've I still have emails from like 10 years ago sitting in a folder so it's not gone but it's still uh it's not there in my immediate I don't need it to be in my immediate field of vision or immediately accessible be like Elsa Let It Go this is lwh hanging fruit so you can cut your inbox in half simply by getting rid of emails that you've been holding on to for too long so if you do anything after this video just go to your email and delete 10 junk emails that you've been holding on to Forever use rules to automatically filter emails like if you're a member of list serves as many of us are you can set up rules to have those Auto red and auto file I've got some links in the description of this video on YouTube to show you how to do that so whether you're on Google or you're on Outlook you can filter them now one thing my sister starts out with billions of emails like so if you have 333,000 emails and you're starting with a giant backlog and you're like I can't sort all of these here's what I recommend go back back three months so anything prior to three months from now create a folder called emails prior to whatever that date is right so let's say it's prior to Jan 1st let's say we're in like March 31st and so it's three months from you know three months behind was Jan 1 right take everything prior to Jan 1 and put it in a folder and call it everything prior to jam Force right that's it just put it there chances are you don't need immediate access to these emails and as you need to go back and get things for specific reasons you can file them where they need to be filed uh and then now you've you're only left with your inbox for um anything that's 3 months or newer and then you can file those away now the search function in your inbox will help you find anything that you need ad hoc um you can file things away on an ongoing basis um so that is a very critical thing so something else to consider is that you want to be triaging in filing as you go so if it's an email for an RPP that's coming up then put rppr on your master to-do list and file the emails in the appropriate email folder and say okay this is in that email folder for the rppr now your brain knows it'll be taken care of at the appropriate time because it's on your to-do list and it doesn't see it as an active item on its to-do list right which is what it looks like to your brain if you keep it in your inbox okay now if you recall in episode two and three we talked about how you can manage the flow of things as they come in now at this point the RPP becomes your action that goes on your schedule list which means that when the time comes for you to take action all the information you need will be in that folder it'll be where you need it and you trust your triaging system to tell you when it's time to do it so now you've taken that action item out of your field of vision immediate field of vision which as we've learned before is distracting and creates anxiety so what you do then is you're creating a workflow and a prioritization flow rather than just letting emails sit in your inbox until you get around to dealing with them have a OneTouch rule for email now every email that comes gets dealt with right away which is by the way very impossible to do if you're checking your email ad hoc in the middle of you know in between meetings and so on I click on it then I'm going click on it again and then we'll click on it again now if you pick specific times of the day where you check your email then you'll be able to deal with it right away file it do whatever needs to happen using your workflow system to manage the items that come in emails about a grant being submitted great every single one of them is filed in that particular folder for that Grant and your master to-do list that guides your every moment gets a note Grant is ready for go look at it if it's something for the future put it in whatever system that you have to ping you for future items and file that away everything gets triaged and filed away and the action items are put in their appropriate place on your to-do list now I will be honest most of my emails do have a one touch but a lot of them have a two to three touch I need some time sometimes to think about how I want to deal with it where does it go do I want to triage this do I want to deal with it now and so I put it aside now once again you'll want to massage this model so that it works within your framework right so like this is these are all ideas that you're going to hear and you're going to implement however works for you massage however works for you but here's what I can promise you if you implement even one of these ideas and each additional one will compound this feeling more and more number one you are going to feel more confident knowing that you have a system of workflow management creates confidence because you are no longer worried that you're prioritizing wrong or that you'll miss something you won't look at your inbox and feel the weight of your to-do list you'll look at it and feel like you have a handle on everything which of course makes you feel like a badass two you will look more professional there is nothing more distracting than someone who is talking at you but constantly looking over at notifications you can typically tell when they've checked out from what you're saying and while you're talking they've clearly moved on to something else in their mind to build strong relationships at work people want to feel like they have your attention the way you have theirs that you both agree that the work you're doing is important at this moment third your relationships with everyone will improve your family and everyone around you will feel like they are more important because you don't have one eye on your phone years ago my wife and I went out to dinner uh and Nic we went to oga's uh Sushi and this was shortly after I'd started practicing mindfulness after a little bit of time away and so I had just sort of like had it with my phone I'd been on my phone constantly I was always working and so I decided to deliberately leave my phone in the car and uh at the time I was also running a couple of businesses and so I really needed my phone right like that's how I made my money like I had to have it but I was like just over it and so I left in my car or my wife's car um and while we were having dinner at some point she says to me she looks at me and she grabs my hand and she looks me in the eye and she says thank you so much for focusing on me tonight it meant so much to me and it wasn't her saying that like I wasn't she was like your phone sucks and you were spending so much time on your phone like she just was so grateful to have my attention it was a gut punch for me to realize right that like that was the impact it was having on my family now here's the thing not everybody's going to have the same problem I'm laying bare all of my dirty laundry you may relate to some of it some of these things not to others the key element is that if you feel like work takes up more time in your life than you'd like then the items on this list can help you to reclaim some more of that time back from your email and it is not an exhaustive list so if you have an idea for how you manage your email share it in the comments and let's gather more tactics as always this video is meant to start the the conversation not to be the conversation and I would specially recommend paying attention to the things that you had an emotional response to those are the ones that are most likely to be getting in your way as you start to implement some of the ideas that resonate with you just remember to not rush it and go slowly because what I found over the years is simply being aware of this information affects small changes and they make a huge difference so even if right now you're in the middle of a deadline and now isn't the best time to rework a system your subconscious is going to do a a lot of heavy lifting with this information I'm looking forward to hearing how these ideas helped you and hearing your suggestions thank you so much for watching and don't forget to like subscribe and ring the bell on YouTube so you don't miss a single time-saving episode
