Countering Email Anxiety

Changing Our Reliance On Email, Decreasing Our Stress

How many of us feel anxiety if we haven’t checked our email to find out what’s going on?

How many of us feel anxious about the mounting backlog of responses and inquires sitting in our queue, awaiting our attention?

But do we open our email inbox to tell us what is going on with our work? Does everything that lands in our inbox require our attention?

For many of us, our email stresses us out with decision fatigue and input overload, but we go back to it religiously each day, leaning on it as if emailing was our jobs. This slavish behaviour needs to stop, and we need to redirect ourselves back to our actual work.

If the bulk of your work is knowledge-based or administrative work, then your primary task is to make decisions. How can you make reliable decisions if you are constantly distracted by an incoming barrage of communication asking you to…make more decisions? Email is a public access port of information, opinion, and requests into your day, with almost no filter. It’s difficult to maintain focused decision-making abilities when the world is knocking at your door every few minutes with another (uninvited) request for your time.

Chronic overuse of email signals a lack of trust. Depending on your field and who you are dealing with, it might be imperative that decisions are documented. But does everything need to be recorded in writing? Why can’t we trust each other and ourselves to do our agreed-upon work to accomplish the goal? We think that following up with a written email is a firm insurance policy. “ Get it in writing “ is the mantra. Everyone is so distracted we don’t even trust each other to remember what was discussed or agreed upon. So we end up sending each other reminders all day long.

The global numbers say it all: we won’t get away from email as a communication tool. Instead of running from it, let’s look at a variety of ways that you can make email a useful tool for your work (instead of email as your work)

The intent of the email was long range and cheap written communication, not instant feedback and response. You don’t need email on your phone, pinging you constantly with spam alongside pertinent information. Both are distracting you from your task at hand. If it’s urgent, people should be calling you to speak in person. Calling you on the phone. Which is in your hand.

Periodically wipe out your entire inbox. Put it into an archived folder. Maybe you do this once or twice per month or every quarter, but give yourself a reset on your email. If there was something important in there, the other party will write again or call. And it’s all still archived digitally, don’t worry, it’s still accessible. But now it’s not a cognitive anchor, dragging down your attention. How much of your postal mail do you keep or read? Over 50% of it is junk mail or useless notices, and you (correctly) throw it out.

Your inbox is not a To-Do List for the simple reason that many (most) people with an internet connection have access to it. Email is a means and a method; it is not the objective. The dumb machine programming language of binary 1s and 0s does not know what is essential in your particular work and what is not.

We overly rely on email because it becomes the written record of what happened, what is happening, and what we are planning. Email is not a to-do list. Email is a transmission. Keep your To-Do List elsewhere.

Perish the thought that we might pick up the phone and use our voice to communicate, or leave our office and meet someone face to face. Make an effort; it will be appreciated, and your communication will be deeper and more effective.

I habitually wander around meetings and job sites with a ruled notebook and a hardcopy, written To-Do list specific to the project or program at hand. I take notes by hand. Some of those notes end up in a digital record, but many do not because I edit them down. Analog is the first pass.

Instead of siloed email inboxes containing information, lists of tasks, and correspondence, employ a shared digital space accessible to all. Scores of these shared software platforms are available and affordable.

Put all the digital documents, notes, reports, and plans into one location that everyone can access in their particular schedules.

When you’re using email, don’t let your communications become clutter. When someone gets correspondence from you, it should catch their eye as something noteworthy and needing their attention. It’s easy to spam everyone and anyone, using the email as a digital PA system blaring information and instructions. If you respect your time and attention and go to great effort to preserve both during the workday, help others do the same.

We need to change how we think of communication and processes for our work. We automatically assume that everyone wants to know everything immediately. As if we all suffer from a fear of missing out on some tidbit of information.

Before we send out communications for work, we should work on changing our mindsets with a series of questions.

Is this matter genuinely urgent?

Does this person need to see all the correspondence, or do they just need the result?

Can I wait to send this until I have more complete information?

Can this information wait until our next meeting in person?

An email is a fantastic tool when used appropriately. You wouldn’t use a hammer to set a screw, and you should use email for its intent: long distance, intermittent, written communication. When we allow our inbox to run our day and email becomes the work, we become stressed and anxious. We forget that our primary goal is to maintain clear thinking and space to make informed decisions that help us achieve our goals. The tools and habits we employ should help us toward those goals, not hinder them.

Do you rely on your email inbox to tell you what to do each day?

Start pushing back today: employ at least one of the tactics or tips listed above and see if it makes your workday feel less frantic and hassled.

Related posts:

Whether you want to draw attention to the salient points of a sentence or indicate to user’s that certain text is hyperlinked, at some point in your Flutter Journey you’re going to want to underline…

If the concerns of ordinary people were not overlooked, if their interests were not neglected and their desires not betrayed, there would be no opportunity for anyone to come along and finally give…

I was inspired to write this article after having to consume pretty complex REST API, which structure similar to Contains some information about response itself, some status information, current…