The Problem With Email – And How To Fix It

Where does the time go? If you’re an office worker, it’s likely down the email drain. We spend countless hours - or by some counts almost a third of our week - sending emails, crafting responses, and otherwise dealing with our overstuffed inboxes. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that our sole job is not being responsive to other people’s messages.

The only way to dig yourself out of this hole is to change your relationship with your inbox. Repeat after me: I create greater value for my organization by doing deep work rather than answering emails within five minutes.

Here are our top tips for taking back control over your time and attention.

Tip #1 – Cut the cord

Unfortunately, the delight of receiving an email has faded considerably since the words “You’ve got mail” entered our collective consciousness. And yet, every time we hear the ping (or see the pop-up), we can’t help ourselves.

There’s no blame here. BF Skinner long ago demonstrated that variable rewards provide greater motivation than consistent ones. And email is the perfect variable reward device. Sometimes it’s the response we’ve been waiting for or accolades from a peer. But sadly, most of the time it’s an unnecessary reply all or a newsletter to which you didn’t subscribe.

There’s a real time cost to our email addiction. It can take up to 25 minutes to get back into a task after an interruption. If you’re checking your email every time you get one, or even every 30-60 minutes, those lost minutes add up. Pretty soon, it will be the end of the day and you’ll have little to show for it.

If you want to cut the cord from your email leash, start by turning off notifications. Even better, if your role allows, read email only on a set schedule. We recommend 10am, 2pm, and the end of your workday. If you start the day in email, you may never emerge.

Tip 2 – Use focus time for the hard stuff

Blocking focus time on your calendar and labeling it with what you need to get done is a great strategy for accomplishing the things that count. Don’t waste valuable focus time procrastinating in email. We recommend you close your email program altogether and really dig into the task at hand.

If you’re having trouble getting started – and we all do – try employing the Pomodoro Method. This involves working in sprints of 25 minutes, taking a break for 10 minutes, and then doing another sprint. This technique makes concentrated work easier because you know that relief (in terms of the timer) is in sight.

Tip #3 – Match the medium to the message

We’ve all been in plenty of meetings that should have been emails, but we’ve also sent plenty of emails that should have been posts to a shared platform or quick phone calls. (Yes, people still make phone calls.) High-functioning collaborative teams establish shared expectations from the beginning about which communication modalities will be used when.

For example, when multiple team members are working asynchronously on the same presentation or report, a shared platform like Teams or Basecamp beats email every time. It creates a single source of truth available to all team members, and it goes a long way to preventing version control issues.

Take the time to align on a model for how and when you’ll use meetings, emails, instant messages, and shared platforms. Operating consistently saves loads of time and frustration, but it takes a bit of practice. Be patient with one another, but also hold one another accountable for adopting these shared norms.

Tip #4 – Stop the treadmill

How many times have you sent an email that closes with “Let’s find a time to connect”? And in return you receive “That would be great.” This nonsense continues across another four messages before you finally schedule the desired meeting. This is all too common and a complete waste of time.

For scheduling, send a few dates / times that work for you and ask your recipient to reply with an invite for the one that works best. Even better, share calendars across your team (Outlook and Google Calendar make this easy), and just send an invite for a time when you see your recipient is available.

If you’re asking for information or feedback, be as specific as possible, and take a moment to re-read your email and check for clarity. The extra time you take will serve the whole team.

One final tip: most emails are just one person checking an item off their to-do list and transferring it over to you. Leverage your precious time and energy for the work that is most important to your role – the rest can wait.