I was the person who was overwhelmed by my inbox and was looking for help to manage high volume comms. Overall, the chaos of busy season was definitely easier to manage this year, even though the volume of email did increase up to around 300+ a day in the peak season, likely because I have been in my role longer so more people know me and like to ask me stuff. I really appreciated the commentariat suggestions and would love anyone to add any more systems and hacks – and to those who manage 1000+ emails a day, I take my hat off to you!
What worked:
* Having set times for smashing out emails. I liked to do a batch first thing in the morning and just after lunch, with a final half hour at the end of the day. I tried to use my standing desk for this – for my health, but also as it gives a sense of urgency? Almost like I’m running!
* Blocking those set times in my calendar. Sometimes I have to shift them, but in busy season having a dedicated reply time was essential. I also blocked a time for lunch so I either didn’t get meetings at a regular time slot each day or I moved the lunch to make sure I have it, and I would go sit outside or have a little jump around.
* This ties into ADHD and other neurospicy divergents – having a break and resetting my brain meant that I could work at higher capacity for more of the day. I tried to lean into my biorhythm when I could. For the same reason, I try to avoid meetings at 3pm – this is the worst time to pitch anything to me! I am twice as likely to say no or just generally be uncollaborative.
* Turning off my email when I needed focus time. I already kill as many notifications as I can, but even having it open and silent was distracting. It helped when I could to make my tasks into silos instead of multitasking, which is well known to sap everyone’s brain power.
* Using Quick Parts/ Templates either in app or on a Word doc – putting info that I was asked for over and over again that rarely changes into templates that I could autofill, e.g. the style guide with links to logo files.
* Not replying too quickly! Pick your battles. I found that with some emails, if I deliberately left them for a couple hours, other people would jump in and do the working out on my behalf. Don’t be too eager to be the one to fix stuff if you are busy!
* Judicious use of out-of-office: if I was off-site or super busy, I would let people know with auto-replies and defer them to another day or even another week to focus on deadline-driven priorities. An example was saying that I would only be replying to emails around “key deadline” this week, and all other enquiries would be attended to next week. Sometimes I even ask if they can reach out again after X date so I don’t have to backtrack.
* Once a month I reset to a kind of zero inbox-ish. (I’ll likely never be truly zero inbox again!) I would change the filter on the inbox to “from” instead of “date received.” This would allow me to see at a glance what had been dealt with from each person and what was outstanding that still needed to be picked up or given a bump to keep it moving. It’s a great way to clear out old emails and pick up missed items.
* Still using a physical notebook: small daily tasks, random thoughts to ask my boss, reminders of upcoming meetings, it was definitely still useful to have this and flick through it to see what needed ticked off. Especially for anything that was a small task and didn’t need to go into the project management software, or things that were not high priority but needed the input of three other people.
What didn’t work:
* Full disclosure — the list above has a few things that sound like I was amazing but I was definitely erratic with lots of this, I am definitely learning as I go. The silo tasks was hit and miss, the replying too quickly is definitely a key area to improve, my breaks policy was best practice only. I wasn’t always able to do all of these tactics at all times but I could definitely see the benefits when I did use them. When I’m tired, best practice falls away quickly if it’s not a habit.
* I tried to use a system of flags and “to do” on Outlook to monitor and keep on top of tasks, and it was too complex and dropped off under pressure.
* The biggest impact was one that can’t circumvent all or even any of the hacks — this year I was sick a lot less than last year. For Reasons, I was much healthier this year so didn’t have so many days with brain fog, or days out of the office that turned into two days out and so forth. Unfortunately, in the relentless busy season there is no way to catch up on absences.
What I want to try next year:
* Using new digital tools. LLM/AI garner a spectrum of opinions but there are definitely new tools coming through that should help us busy folk. Using automations to pick up on missed tasks. Tidying meeting notes so I can focus more in the session and type more roughly. Using automations to upload daily reports directly into our data management software, and using automations there to analyse it and email it back to me! I am keen to see what they develop in this space in so many ways.
* Doing the reset to zero inbox by sorting by name once a week, preferably on a Thursday so that I stay on top of small tasks a bit better. This was really a gamechanger and clearing out the inbox so I know where I am at makes a huge difference to my mental clarity. Big tasks make it into our project management software but there are a lot of things that are more work than needed to turn into a task.
* Giving it to someone else: training my direct reports with more nuance so that I can hand over more things to them.
That’s my wrap for the year, please do share your hints and tips!
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