Drowning in email? Here’s help

Feel overwhelmed by a bombardment of electronic messages? Here’s advice on how to cope

YOU open your email inbox and your heart sinks. There waiting for you are 223 messages, all demanding your urgent attention. Oh no, this is going to take you all day to sort through. That’s the problem with email, says American productivity guru Jocelyn K Glei – we treat it like a task when it’s actually a tool. So instead of making our lives easier, it traps us in an endless cycle of guilt and obligation. In short, we’ve become slaves to our email.

Recent studies show that on average office workers dip into their inboxes a whopping 74 times a day and spend roughly 28 percent of their time on the task of reading and responding to emails.

“We cede control of our workday – and our to-do lists – to the dictates of others,” Glei says. “Rather than focusing mindfully on what’s outgoing, we strive futilely to keep up with what’s incoming.”

In a new book, Unsubscribe, she offers useful tips on how to free yourself from the email hamster wheel so you can get on with the work that really matters.

SHIFT YOUR PERSPECTIVE

What if you pictured the messages in your inbox like a stack of real, physical mail? If you got 200 letters a day, you would never think it was realistic to respond to all of them. Why should email be any different? Your time is limited and you can respond to only so much.

WHO ARE THE PEOPLE WHO REALLY MATTER?

All email messages are not created equal. A message from your boss is not the same as a message from a demanding former client is not the same as a message from someone you’ve never met. Your relationship to the person emailing you should govern its importance – or lack thereof. When you’re at your busiest, having this hierarchy in mind will help you quickly to prioritise which emails are truly urgent or important and which are just noise.

STRUCTURING YOUR DAY

Start your day with meaningful work. Despite the fact that one in two people look at their email before breakfast, it’s rarely productive to check your inbox first thing in the morning. In fact, it’s

If you got 200 letters a day you wouldn’t respond to them all