Almost every time I mention the word email, our clients sigh, roll their eyes or tell me how much they loathe it. Email is incessant. Email is time consuming. Email is work.
In working with hundreds of companies to design and deploy productivity training, you can imagine that I have seen the full spectrum of email management effectiveness from exceptional to dismal.
It is agonizing to watch clients allow their inboxes to control them. There is another way to manage your email and your life. You don’t have to loathe your email. You can love it. Yes, love it. And you can make it work for you.
Before you give up on email and abdicate your power to it, let’s identify and explore the five ways you can love your email and make it work for you.
The Five Ways to Love Your Email And Make It Work For You
There are five ways you can love your email and make it work for you:
- Email is freedom.
- Email is connection.
- Email is boundaries.
- Email is efficiency.
- Email is learning.
Let’s explore each of these five ways you can love your email so you can make it work for you.
- Email is freedom.
Email enables you to work from anywhere. You are not constrained to an office, specific geographic location, nor time zone. With a laptop and WIFI, you have the freedom and power to stay in touch with your clients, friends and family and current on your project work from almost anywhere in the world. What other communication tool affords you this level of freedom? Email enables you to be present in all aspects of your life.
- Email is connection.
Email is your connection to your clients, vendor partners, colleagues, friends and family. You can stay connected to both your professional and personal life from within one inbox. Want a project status update? Check your inbox. Want to follow up on the projects you’ve delegated to your team? Check your inbox. Want to know who has a sick child, what you need to bring to supper club or when you need to schedule your next dentist appointment? Check your inbox.
- Email is boundaries.
Email is an excellent filter of people, projects, ideas and requests for your time. You can check your email when you choose to check it. You can use the email out of office notification as a boundary around your time so you can carve out time to complete your work, think, reflect and enjoy life. Email enables you to filter and manage requests of your time and energy and respond based on your priorities. It is these boundaries that empower you to work and play from a place of relaxed control.
- Email is efficiency.
Email is the ultimate efficiency tool. Fully utilize this tool so you can save hours each week. Stop wasting your time sorting and filing messages, information and data. Automatically prioritize your messages using rules or conditional formatting so you can find your most critical emails and identify which email to read first. Respond to meeting requests and automatically populate your calendar with the what, when, and where of the meeting. And, if you’re very lucky, the meeting organizer will append the agenda and the supporting documentation to the meeting request so you literally have everything you need for that meeting at your fingertips.
- Email is learning.
Email is a tool that enables you to continuously learn. Your subscription to blogs, newsletters, and/or LinkedIn groups can fill your inbox with new information, courses to attend for continuing education and expand your knowledge base. Email makes it easy for you to access learning from a variety of people and organizations.
What if you look at your inbox differently? What if, instead of loathing it, resisting or believing that it is the sole source of everything terrible in your life, you decide to look at it as a tool that supports you and enables the life you want to lead. How might your relationship with email change?
Email empowers you to be free, to stay connected, and to establish boundaries. Email is an incredibly efficient tool that improves your productivity and effectiveness. Email expands your mind and introduces you to new ideas and learning opportunities.
So, how do you love your email? Go count the ways.