Hello! Welcome back! I hope that you are staying warm, safe, and healthy! In today’s blog, we are going to stay focused on working towards Inbox Zero.
Last week we took a look at how many emails we currently had in our inbox, how many times you’re going to respond to your emails, and the three categories emails can fall under. In case you don’t remember, they are:
1. If you come across a message that needs no action from you, then archive that email instantly. It’s taking up valuable space that you need!
2. If you can respond to a message in 3 minutes or less, do it. Quickly deal with it and get it out of the way. Afterward, archive it so it is no longer in your inbox.
3. If a message is going to take some time to contemplate, investigate, or locate specific material, there are a couple of possibilities you have here. If you are using a project management system, pop it in there as a task so you don’t overlook that you have to work on it. Another choice is to snooze the email to a time and date that you can spend some time on it. If you do it this way, you are briefly removing the message out of your inbox so you can deal with it at a future time. I know that email snoozing is accessible with Gmail, but I’m not certain if it’s available for others like Outlook. If you have another program for your email, check it out to see if you have that option. This week we’re going to take an even deeper look into your inbox. We are all therapists, so we know all about vulnerability and going deeper right???!!! Again, we are going to work through an exercise and look at our emails to gain some information. While you are doing this exercise, I ask you to glance through your emails, but don’t devote any time to deleting, etc. While looking at the subject lines, dates you received emails, and who it was sent by, ponder on the following questions:
1. What types of emails are you receiving on an even basis? Are most of them newsletters? Junk mail? Communication from colleagues, family, or friends?
2. What are the subject lines? Are they detailed? Do they effortlessly give you information about the content?
3. What date are they from? Some months ago? Does a sizable amount of them derive from one day of the week?
4. Who’s emailing you? Most likely a decent amount of them originates from only a few people or accounts. Now take a step back and look at what you have documented. You will most likely see that some repetitions and behaviors have formed. Are you procrastinating on certain emails? If so, what is keeping you from going through those emails? Maybe you don’t know what to do with them, maybe you are anxious that something bad is going to be in one of the emails, or perhaps you just don’t know how to respond to a specific email. Taking a look into our procrastination can help us recognize what needs to change to reach Inbox Zero. Do you have priority difficulties? Perhaps only going through particular emails and leaving the others in your inbox? Maybe you don’t understand how to prioritize your emails so you are just going with the flow and doing the best that you can to keep your head above water.
What about having excessive amounts of messages from similar people? If this is an ongoing thing, is there a better, more efficient way for you to communicate rather than going back and forth through email?
What other patterns and habits do you realize after taking a deeper look at your emails that you currently have in your inbox? I would love to hear from you! Tell me what you learned about your emails while doing this exercise and what you hope to remedy! You can email me your responses to kkeller@mindfulnesscubicle.com.
That’s it for this week! If you are wanting to get your business more organized than just Inbox Zero, take a peek at the ClickUp Private Practice Business Hub. But don’t purchase it just yet! ClickUp Private Practice Business Hub 2.0 is coming shortly, and it has added pieces in it including templates, scripts, logs, and much more! You’ll want to realize what 2.0 has to offer before purchasing the Business Hub!
Have a great week and take care of yourself! -Kim
