Researchers have established a clear link between spending time on email and stress: the more frequently we check our email, the more frazzled we feel.Meanwhile, office workers check their inboxes 74 times a day and spend 28% of their workday on reading and responding to email.

The Email Story

<ul><li>When you don’t know if you’ll get a big reward, small reward, or no reward at all - that's when you are most likely to repeat a behavior and slip into addiction.</li><li>Email is a near-perfect random reward system.</li><li>Random rewards make us want to check email repeatedly in the hope of a reward.</li></ul>

Why Email is So Addictive

<ul><li>Inbox Zero is a state when you have answered or filed all your email and there are no new unread messages.</li><li>Chipping away at our inbox gives us a sense of satisfaction precisely because the act includes such clear progress indicators.</li><li>Progress is one of the most motivating forces known to humankind.</li><li>Email inboxes make progress so visible which is another reason why email is so attractive.</li></ul>

Why Inbox Zero is Irresistible

Our negativity bias toward email means that every email we send or read is interpreted more negatively than it was intended, which is one of the reasons why more email tends to equate more stress.The lack of social cues in email also forces us to spend more time trying to interpret what the sender meant: Are they angry? Are they satisfied? Should I apologize?

Why Email is Stressful

<ul><li>The rule of reciprocity states that if someone does a favor for you, you want to return the favor even if the favor wasn’t something you wanted.</li><li>Numerous experiments have shown that humans tend to adhere to the rule of reciprocity in social interactions.</li><li>When emails start piling up, you begin to feel stressed out.</li></ul>

The Rule Of Reciprocity

<ul><li>Set aside 30-60 minutes in the late morning and a similar amount of time in the mid- to late afternoon for checking email.</li><li>Turn off notifications and don't check email throughout the day.</li><li>Just having your email program open in the background of your computer screen as you focus on another task can decrease performance.</li><li>Avoid such distractions by quarantining your email in a separate area from your main workspace.</li></ul>

Tips To Check Email

<ul><li>Every time you stop doing a task you are working on to check your email, you incur what researchers call a “switching cost”.</li><li>It typically takes at least 25 minutes to get properly back into the task after you’ve interrupted yourself.</li><li>The more frequently you check email, the less productive you are and the less happy you are.</li></ul>

The Switching Costs

The best way to get less email is to send less email. A great way to do this is to proactively close the conversation as soon as it’s convenient. This means always striving to respond to emails completely, cutting off the possibility of a long back-and-forth.Do a bit more work when you send or reply to emails.

Closing The Email Loop

The average person checks email 77 times a day, sends and receives more than 122 email messages a day and spends nearly a third of their workweek managing a constant influx of email. Even when we're away from work, checking email is the most popular activity we engage in on our mobile devices. Email is a powerful and essential tool - but it has become a near-constant source of frustration, anxiety and distraction from our work. In this insightful and intensely practical book, Jocelyn K. Glei explains why email is so overwhelming and addicting, and lays out strategies for limiting the energy you spend on it. These include setting meaningful work goals, clarifying to yourself which people and messages truly matter and creating a daily routine that aligns with your natural creative rhythms. Through her actionable, thoughtful advice, Glei will help you to: - Stop letting email dictate your mood, your focus and your to-do list - Process your inbox efficiently - Compose messages that get people to take action - Establish boundaries that allow you to engage in more meaningful work.

Stashed ideas

Unsubscribe: How to Kill Email Anxiety, Avoid Distractions, and Get Real Work Done

The very first email was sent 50 years ago, in the spring of 1971.The incredible spread of email since then unleashed an unimaginable torrent of information into our everyday lives.As knowledge workers, we continue to struggle to process our inboxes, not to mention use that flood of information to move our projects and goals forward.Many have tried to lead us on a path out of information overload, and each “wave” of productivity tactics and apps valiantly attempts to solve the problems the previous one created.

The Humble Email

A simple medium that was originally meant for sending messages – email – has expanded to become a notification system, a to-do list, a notetaking tool, a contact database, and an archival system for our digital lives.All great technologies begin as blessings… but end up expanding so wildly that they become a curse.

Email Is Used For Everything

You’re probably using email for multiple purposes far beyond what it was designed for:<ul><li>You use email to send messages</li><li>You use email as a to-do list</li><li>You use email to keep track of notes and ideas</li><li>You use email to manage complex projects and areas of your life</li></ul>These are extremely different use cases, and using one platform for all of them ensures it fails at all of them. To perform each of them effectively, you have to break apart each of the four essential activities of modern work – Email, Task Management, Notetaking, and Project Management – and use the right tool for each of those jobs.

The Productivity Stack

All the subsequent waves of productivity software that we’re going to look at arose in reaction to the Email Big Bang, like gravitational waves echoing across the universe for eons. Each of them is an attempt to solve the problem of information overload that was unleashed upon humanity half a century ago.Example: Automobiles seemed miraculous until they started crowding the highways and blackening the skies (this is called a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_trap">Progress Trap</a>).

Email as a Task Manager and Everything Inbox: The Progress Trap

Email created thousands of “open loops” – unfinished or incomplete mental tasks – in our lives. And as GTD sought to create a system for taking in, prioritizing, and closing those loops in a systematic way, digital to-do list apps  gained widespread adoption as people realized just how much easier it was to maintain a to-do list using them.

Task Managers: How to Get Your To-Dos Off Your Mind

Task overwhelm occurs when the actionable items in your list are crowded out by the non-urgent ones: when your ideas, list of someday-maybes, inspirations, and random learnings make it difficult to find the singular, next important action.

Task Overwhelm

Coinciding roughly with the rise of the iPhone in the late 2000s, digital notetaking apps like <a href="https://evernote.com/">Evernote</a>, <a href="https://bear.app/">Bear</a>, and <a href="https://simplenote.com/">Simplenote</a> rose to meet the demand for easily capturing notes from anywhere (and having them available everywhere).Each new generation of tools takes over certain jobs but not others, and notetaking apps unlocked a new form of digital creativity well-matched with our fluid, mobile, always-on, everyday lives.

Notetaking Apps: Your Own, Personally Curated Solution to Information Overwhelm

Notetaking overwhelm happens when you’re collecting everything, processing your notes, and growing a knowledge system – but somehow, you never revisit the notes you’ve captured, and don’t seem to be able to achieve the day-to-day usefulness from your notes you’ve already collected.

Notetaking Overwhelm

Personal Dashboards push mere notetaking to the next level: they provide the big picture, using your curated knowledge and data to guide action and help you make better decisions.Your dashboards proactively inform the actions you take every day. To do that, they have to be dynamic and responsive to your changing needs. They have to change in response to how you want information presented at the moment, which facets you want to explore or understand, or based on changes in your digital environment.

Personal Dashboards: a Just-in-Time Springboard to Knowledgeable Action 

The main purpose of a dashboard – think of the dashboard in your car, or the cockpit of an aeroplane – is to facilitate fast, informed decisions. This new kind of document is perfect for modern knowledge workers – more interactive than simply editing text, more intelligent than a static document, more dynamic than a bullet point list, and more collaborative than a Google Doc. And they address notetaking overwhelm by structuring, organizing, and reframing your existing notes on a just-in-time basis.

Dashboards: A Better Solution

The power of dashboards has now trickled down to everyone, as part of the “no-code” movement: apps that allow for extensive customization, without requiring technical coding skills, such as Webflow (for web design), Zapier (for automation), Airtable (for databases), and Notion, Coda, and Microsoft Loop (for dashboards and collaborative pages).

From Email To Notion

It takes far more time and energy to create a Personal Dashboard in Notion, for example, versus a note in Evernote. A personal dashboard has to be architected – designed, built, iterated on, and maintained over time. Start building with the end in mind. Here are some good questions to ask yourself:<ul><li>What problems do I want to solve – the big questions I’m trying to answer?</li><li>What is the ideal future state for a challenge I’m facing?</li><li>What personal dreams or goals do I have that I might not have shared with anyone else?</li></ul>

Build, Don't Migrate

We all have a holistic productivity stack, which changes slowly. We can call it a “Second Brain,” because it allows you to offload and utilize all the complex information swirling through your mind.Each new generation of productivity software adds a new layer on top, instead of completely displacing the ones that came before. Not only is it unnecessary to immediately ascend to the highest layer, but it’s also probably wise to wait until the dust has settled and it’s clear what the new layer is and what it’s for. We need to have patience.

How to Craft Your Personal Productivity Stack

From the dawn of email to the rise of personal dashboards: Introducing the 4 functions of your productivity stack & how you can use each piece of it better.

How to Build Your Personal Productivity Stack

Most people see email as a strictly transactional tool, using it only when they need something or owe someone something. That’s exactly why you should use it to stand out.

People love to feel appreciated. Instead of worrying about all the things you need to do in the morning, take a moment to thank someone for what they do for you. “Thanks for all your support during that last big project” or “I’m so glad we get to work together. Thanks for being my sounding board” is all you need to say to make an impact.

An Email Saying "Thank You

The fastest way to get what you want is to get to know the people who <a href="https://forge.medium.com/the-power-of-doing-the-right-things-consistently-1e7430bc0efb">already have it </a>. Send a message to someone a step or two further ahead in their career and let them know how their work has impacted you. I like to <a href="https://forge.medium.com/how-to-get-on-the-radar-of-people-you-admire-5f6646a65c45">use the formula </a>: “Thanks to your work doing X, I’ve been able to accomplish Y.”

An Email To someone you admire

There’s something magical about someone you don’t know very well showing interest in you. Often, it’s even more validating than when a friend encourages you, because they really don’t have to do it. One sentence can impact someone for a lifetime. Neill taught me to always <a href="https://michael-thompson.medium.com/to-add-meaning-to-your-career-be-a-name-dropper-1d60514b2c85">lift as you climb </a>.

An Email Lifting sometime

Reach out to someone you recently met during a training session or through a mutual friend. See if they’re up for a chat. We all need more eyes looking out for us.

An Email to someone you just met

It’s harder to network with new people, so why not use your energy to check in on the people you used to work with? It’s a good way to learn about what’s going on in your industry.

An Email to an Old Co-Worker

Save your boss from having to make rounds before the weekend. Tell them what you’ve got going on: “Here’s where we stand regarding W, X, Y so far this week. I’m focusing on Z tomorrow. But if there’s something that needs to be pushed, let me know.” It will help you understand your priorities and show that you’re organized.

A Thursday afternoon email to your blood

When I talked to <a href="https://medium.com/u/1ceb119b8919?source=post_page-----2358f8451ef9-----------------------------------">Melody Wilding, LMSW </a>, the author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Yourself-Overthinking-Channel-Emotions/dp/1797201964">Trust Yourself </a>, she suggested I send myself a Friday afternoon message with a run-down of the week. Try it: Write down your wins, a few things you learned, and any idea that made your week a successful one. It’s a simple exercise, but it really helps you <a href="https://forge.medium.com/you-still-need-an-after-work-routine-when-working-from-home-9850c1e3ccc7">transition out of work mode </a>and realize that what you’ve done is enough.

A Friday Afternoon email to yourself

Networking is something we often struggle with. Here's a few ideas I read that helped me a lot in reaching out. 

Most people see email as a strictly transactional tool, using it only when they need something or owe someone something. That’s exactly why you should use it to stand out. Taking a moment to send…

Career

The 7 Emails You Should Send Every Week to Get Ahead in Your Career

Always keeping emails short is a simple rule, but the effects can be profound. Once you no longer think of email as a general-purpose tool for talking about anything at any time, its stranglehold on your attention will diminish.

There is an underlying belief, in the knowledge sector, that hyper-communication equals work. We are part of a workflow centered around ongoing conversations fueled by unstructured and unscheduled messages delivered through digital communication tools like email and instant messenger services. Constantly switching tasks and responding to email fuels our human need to rationalize what is happening around us, often helping us flee from the more nuanced and complex reality.

The Hyperactive Hive Mind

According to data gathered by the time-tracking software <a class="idea-content-link" href="https://www.rescuetime.com/">RescueTime</a><ul><li>Half of the users check communication applications like email or Slack every six minutes or less.</li><li>The most common average checking time was once every minute.</li><li>For half the users studied, the longest unbroken period of work was no more than forty minutes, with the most typical longest time being only twenty minutes.</li><li>More than two-thirds of users never experienced an hour without an interruption.</li><li>For business users, the average email volume was 126 messages per day.</li></ul>

A terrible way to extract value from human neurons

Attention switching costs are huge on our brains and workflows. This means that constantly jumping from one task to another brings with it a significant cognitive load that slows down our ability to focus and get the most out of our work. Yet, reactively replying to emails appears to be a “productive” use of our time on most occasions, due to the perceived convenience of this workflow in the short run.

Email reduces productivity

For those individuals who score high in neuroticism (a <a href="https://simonesmerilli.com/life/personality-big-five">personality trait</a> that is correlated with high levels of anxiety and negative emotions), the mere thought of batching email replies or using a more mindful approach to this tool can be stress-inducing. This is because of the paleolithic nature of our social-animal brains, who feel FOMO (fear of missing out) and uneasiness at the mere thought of not replying instantly to interactions with other human beings who are part of our same tribe.

Email makes us miserable

There's nothing fundamental about these newly increased workloads; they're instead an unintended side effect—a source of stress and anxiety that we can diminish if we're willing to step away from the frenetic back-and-forth that defines the hyperactive hive mind workflow.

The rate of spread of email since the 90s has been outstanding, almost to such a point that the hyperactive hive mind workflow has chosen us. 3 main drivers for this<ul><li>“The hidden costs of asynchrony”: synchrony might be “expensive” to set up, but constant asynchrony is much more expensive in the long term, as issues that may be solved in a couple of minutes tend to stretch in long threads of mindless back and forth.</li><li>“The cycle of responsiveness”: Email fuels an endless feedback loop, that no one actually actively decided to implement rationally.</li><li>"The caveman at the computer screen"</li></ul>

Email has a mind of its own

Once we understand the contours of our frustrations with knowledge work, we recognize that we have the potential to make these efforts not only massively more productive but also massively more fulfilling and sustainable.

Attention capital is creating workflows that optimize the human brain's ability to add value to information. Not just to chase our own tails and send and receive more emails. The optimal way to deploy our human brains is sequentially. There are 2 main components to knowledge work: <ul><li>work execution, which requires more autonomy and is where knowledge workers use their brains and skills</li><li> workflow, which is where you need less autonomy because it is the structure and coordination of the work</li></ul>

The attention capital principle

Incorporating efficient production processes into knowledge work can make an incredible difference in increasing performance and minimizes ambiguity as to what to work on at any given time. Task boards like Asana and Trello are some of the key tools when it comes to setting up processes. For a production process to be effective, it should be:<ul><li>Easy to review who's working on what and how that work is going</li><li>Possible to make progress without lots of unscheduled communication</li><li>Known procedures for updating assignments to minimize both unscheduled communication and ambiguity</li></ul>

The process principle

By spending more time setting up rules or protocols for work in advance, we can spend less effort coordinating the work at the moment. An eg: The standard protocol meeting scheduling is "energy-minimizing email ping pong," which has a low energy cost at the moment but large cognitive costs long-term. Something like a scheduling link or open office hours can change that dramatically. Consider, customer support protocols like using team emails instead of personal ones Also, consider email protocols like not promising to reply to every email and keeping emails short.

The protocol principle

The specialization principle says that doing fewer things with higher quality and more accountability can significantly improve productivity. Basically, applying essentialism to knowledge work. Less intense ways to further specialize are:<ul><li>Outsourcing what you don't do well</li><li>Giving your <a href="https://workbrighter.co/remote-management/">team</a> more autonomy</li><li>Sprinting on specific projects</li><li>Considering budgeting attention, workloads, or meeting time</li></ul>Companies should also consider supercharging support staff and making those roles more efficient, building smart interfaces between specialists and support or different departments.

THE SPECIALIZATION PRINCIPLE

Outlines recommendations for business leaders on how to maximize a working team's professional productivity by improving administrative support and streamlining digital traffic.

A World Without Email - Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload

Effective emails can help you reclaim a large portion of your workday, increase your productivity, and improve your chances of getting a reply.The average worker spends 28 percent of their day reading and answering email, according to a 2012 study by New York City based management consulting firm. Keeping emails brief and to the point can help you reclaim some of this time.Here are the best emails tips you should use while sending your emails .

Why Effective Email Necessary ?

When you write an email, it should provide just enough information to answer these five questions: Who are you? What do you want? Why are you asking me? Why should I do what you're asking? What is the next step?"This is all an intelligent person needs to know to make a decision"

1. Your Email Should Answer Five Simple Questions

Read your email over and take out any superfluous information before you hit send. People who feel a need to tell their life story probably believe their request is on shaky ground in the first place, says Kawasaki. But more information won't get the recipient to take action. "Long emails are either unread or, if they are read, they are unanswered,"

2. Cut out excessive details to get a response

Limiting yourself to five sentences forces you to think in a concise manner, helping you stay focused and save time. Shorter emails also allow the recipient to make a quick decision on what action to take, increasing the likelihood that you'll receive a reply.If you want to encourage the recipient to reply in a similar fashion, web designer Mike Davidson created five.sentences, a website that explains the philosophy and includes text you can copy and paste into your email

3. Shorter emails will help you stay focused

The tone of an email is difficult to assess, but more often than not, the reader will assign a tone, even when one was not intended, so be careful not to craft the email with tone by watching the use of exclamation marks, using inflammatory words, etc.

4. Watch Your Tone

More and more you see quotes at the bottom of emails. Some are benign inspirational quotes, such as “Be the best you can be every day,” these are fine" however, avoid quotes with religious meaning, quotes that could be viewed as excluding others, etc. could offend a co-worker, a client, or a vendor, which could result in the loss of productivity and business.

Unsubscribe: How to Kill Email Anxiety, Avoid Distractions, and Get Real Work Done

How to Build Your Personal Productivity Stack

The 7 Emails You Should Send Every Week to Get Ahead in Your Career

A World Without Email - Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload

Best Email Advices

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