Zen habits: 3 tips to make your emailing more efficient

There are a few things in this modern digital world that have become pretty much “common-place”, but really if we break things down into what is ACTUALLY happening – like if we were to put it into a real-world scenario – it would end up being rather quite crazy.

Compulsive inbox checking is one of those things.

Or maybe you don’t compulsively inbox check – maybe you just hang out at the mailbox all day until mail arrives and gives you something to do.

I had this thought last weekend of how crazy compulsive inbox checking would be if we compared it to every 10 minutes running from our house down the path to an actual mailbox in the hope of finding something – backwards and forwards all day.

 

 

Checks mail. Goes back inside.

 

opens mail, reads mail –

(discards the spam)

Checks mail, goes back inside.

 

 

opens mail, reads mail

 

 

closes up mail, puts mail back in mailbox, pretends mail isn’t there.

runs gleefully to mailbox

“Oh dang, it’s not new mail – it’s that same one from earlier”

closes up mail again, returns it back to mail box, goes back inside.

And this goes on and on the whole day until you have a pile of discarded spam mails and a pile of tricky un-opened/(opened) emails that you just don’t know how to reply to.

And it goes on day by day until by the end of the month you have a dooms-pile of unopened/opened emails and you lust longingly for the holy grail of “inbox zero”.
(Or if you’re my husband you have 76 000+ un-read emails in your inbox)

Email organisation is my nemesis.

I think because I’m an analogue kinda gal, that digital systems just don’t seem to stick for me.

I had my uber-organisation friend once explain her email system of tagging, categorising, marking, cross-checking, colour-coding and folder-sorting her inbox and it just about blew my brains out in complexity. I tried it for 20 seconds and then I got distracted by a pile of spam.

I’ve recently started implementing a new email system of only checking my inbox TWICE a day – sometime around 10 or 11 and another time around 3 or 4 depending on my day.

The most challenging thing about this so far has been getting out of the HABIT of checking my inbox – as it’s become so autopilot as a thing to consistently “refresh”

So here are three things that have been helping me this week to minimise compulsive email checking:

• Having a specific time in my schedule that is dedicated specifically to email. That way I’m not feeling like my emails won’t get seen, but rather that I have 20 minutes that I am RESPONDING and DEALING with emails rather than just letting them run throughout the course of my day.
• Having only 3 actions to take on my emails: DELETE, REPLY, TO DO.
  For a very long time I have kind of been using my email inbox as a “to-do” list, which I know is a very non-optimal thing to do! Because A) it keeps you having to be logged in to your inbox (where all the other distractions hang out) and B) Having your email list become your to-do list is usually putting other people’s stuff before the stuff that YOU need to do to move forward.  So this week I’ve started taking stuff OUT of my email inbox and writing them down into my diary as a to-do action. That way the next morning I don’t need to log back into my email to check what my to-dos are for the day.
• Something that I’ve learned from zen habits is to start with your inbox and tackle them from the top down. I am notorious for skipping through emails and dealing with the ones that are easy to deal with and then ending up with a whole bunch of emails that I don’t know what to do with or don’t have time to give a thoughtful response to. {Side note: If you’re waiting on a reply from me right now – that’s you.} If you take ACTION on the email as you open them up then you avoid the open, “mark as unread”, open again, mark as un-read cycle as I’ve been known to get myself spinning round in – as above!

How do you best organise your email system? What do you find works best for you? Leave a comment below with your NUMBER ONE HIGH VIBE LIVING email tip – I’d love to learn from you!

… and if you’re into more HIGH VIBE LIVING – come join the inspiration platform!