Email can be a great tool to greatly simplify communication, but often it’s hard to say whether it is actually a tool we use instead of an enemy we have to keep at bay. You probably know what I mean if you have ever come back from a two or three week vacation and were greeted by several hundred unread messages in your inbox. I actually was in such a situation this spring, and here is how I dealt with it. 

Unfortunately, I hardly ever kept my inbox clean to begin with, letting several dozen emails accumulate and spend time on them whenever I felt like it. But I didn’t often feel like it. Weeks later, the count was suddenly over 200 and I was wondering how I’ll ever be able to fix this situation. After having dealt with those messaged that seemed to demand my attention the most, there were still many more left than I wanted to reply to. 

I obviously had to make sure to respond to emails that really are important. Many aren’t, especially most of what is sent to you via CC and BCC. So, make it a habit to clean at least all emails you receive at a certain day. If you realize that you can’t even deal with one day’s worth of communication, there is something severely off with your situation. You either need to hire a secretary, your boss has to hire some more employees, or you have to stop paying attention to trifles and unsubscribe from gossipy newsletters and the like. In my case, I realized that I simply don’t have the time to respond to every email I get. It’s nice when fans write to me, but I obviously can’t spend days responding to them, because I then wouldn’t get anything done. 

Once you have made it a habit to deal with all incoming emails, you can think about what to do with your backlog. There were several hundred emails in my inbox, and it was clear that I wasn’t going to deal with all of them at once, and I also didn’t feel like spending an entire weekend on them. Thus, I dealt with about a dozen emails from my backlog once the day’s work was done. I did this every day. 

Seeing steady progress as the counter of my inbox kept decreasing was motivation enough to keep going. I am sure that I would quickly have felt burnt out had I decided to spread this work not over a few weeks but just a few days. However, by working on this task gradually, it was not only much more manageable, I also acquired a new habit that has spread to other areas of my life. In the process I have learnt several other important lessons as well, which I will share with you in due time.