004: Email 3x Per Day
Welcome to Toolbox Tips, Effective’s weekly newsletter aimed at putting more tools in your productivity toolbox.
I think email is the bane of everyone’s existence — especially if you work in the corporate world. It can be such a time suck, sometimes eating up an entire day responding to messages as they come in.
To fix the problem, so many productivity thinkers will tell you, “Just clear your inbox to zero once per day for 30 minutes and you’re good!”
While this might work for self-employed creators, this doesn’t work for the normal person working in the corporate business world (read: probably you). If you left your email alone for 24 hours, surely something bad would happen… right?
This is why I’m an advocate of doing email 3x per day. Thirty minutes in the morning, midday, and end of day. When you process email, delete, delegate, reply if it takes less than two minutes, or add an email to your task list to handle later if it takes longer.
This does two things:
- Reduces your time spent on email to a max of 90 minutes per day.
- Spaces out processing email to a max gap of four hours so you don’t miss anything important (but if it is important, it will get to you some other way).
If you’re spending too much time on email, give this a try!
ACT: Next week, set up three 30 minute blocks each day to process email and stick to it as best as possible.
Notent Notables
Welcome Alex, Vinicius, Michael, Joel, and John to Toolbox Tips this week. Happy to have you all here!
In a recent livestream, Elena asked what to do with overworking at home. Here’s part of my answer in this clip, including my story of burnout.
For Your Enjoyment
Last week’s stream was a blast, chatting everywhere from solitude and scatterfocus to Mem and Evernote. This week, we’re going to do more of the same. Come join us at 1pm CDT!
Chris Bailey’s book Hyperfocus was a big component of last week’s stream. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend doing so. It’s an excellent look into to major modes our brain has for handling attention: hyperfocus and scatterfocus.
Here to Help
I can help you in three ways on your productivity journey when you’re ready:
- Have a question about your system or productivity concept and need help? Ask it here.
- Wanting to level up your Obsidian skills? Check out Obsidian Made Simple.
- Looking to streamline your PKM workflow? Get a 60 day free trial of Readwise.
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