Tools for Thought

There’s a reason why so many books and blog posts warn readers about the dangers of checking email, but they usually reach the right conclusions for the wrong reasons. Instead of recommending that you never check email in the morning, or to avoid checking email between scheduled intervals, I have a better suggestion.

Never check email. Ever.

Treading water

From the receiver’s perspective, the goal of any message is to understand its content. Some messages are more or less content free, and fit for passive consumption. No one has to struggle with cat pictures forwarded from bored coworkers. It’s obvious enough to delete or archive these, unless the recipient retains the habit of leaving all messages in his or her inbox. Spam may be annoying, but dealing with it is a no-brainer. A “real” message, on the other hand, requires conscious decision making.

“Checking” email is a mindset of monitoring the inbox for messages that look important or interesting, rather than systematically reviewing all messages to identify the nature of each.

We scan the From and Subject lines, skipping on if they don’t catch our attention. Out of 80 messages, 20 might be worth actually opening. We open one of these, glance at the body, and intone the “Hmmm” to ourselves that translates as, “This one can probably wait.” Then we repeat the process with the other 19, occasionally distracted by new messages trickling into the inbox the interim. When we finally hit on one that merits our full attention, it becomes all consuming. We spend the next 15 minutes handling whatever crisis is contained in the email. The other messages have to wait.

Deep diving

The alternative to checking email is processing. Processing means sequentially deleting or opening each message in the inbox, and making a decision about what needs to be done about it.

1. We start at the first email header. If the header makes it obvious that the message can be deleted, it gets deleted on the spot.
2. If it’s not instantly deletable, we open the message and ask, “What is this?”
3. We ask ourselves if the content of the message has an actionable item embedded it in.
4. If so, and the action can be done in less than two minutes, we do it right then, even if it’s a low priority item. Then we delete the message (or archive if that’s your preference). It’s inefficient to reread it later, or put the action on a list, if the action is short enough to be done now.
5. If the action takes longer than two minutes, we deliberately avoid taking immediate action on it. Instead, we tag the email or move it to a folder called “@Action” (see post on context lists if this doesn’t make sense) and write down any projects, actions or calendar items in the appropriate areas. Other possible tag or folder names would be “Reply” or “Follow Up.” Whatever it’s called, the point is to get it out of the inbox. This makes it clear which items in the inbox have been processed — the ones that aren’t there.
6. If the message requires further input from the sender before further action on our part can be taken, we tag the email or move it to a folder called “@Waiting For.” Optionally, we write this into an “@Waiting For” list apart from the email client, with the date name of the sender and the date the Waiting For was created.
7. We determine that someone else needs to handle the action, or is better qualified (like customer service or tech support), we forward or CC the email to the appropriate party, with a line or two indicating what needs to be done with it.
8. If the message doesn’t contain any actionable items, we determine whether it needs to be archived or deleted. Some people archive all email, which is fine, as long as the archive is somewhere other that the inbox. Reserve the inbox for incoming messages.
9. We repeat this process for each message, one by one, until the inbox is empty.

We’ve separated the wheat from the chaff. Non-actionable items have been deleted or archived, and items requiring only short actions have been completed. What’s left is an @Action folder comprised of messages that require more time and attention for action.

Processing time

Processing seems long in description, but it goes much faster in practice.

Let’s look at the highly unlikely worst-case scenario. Batch processing an inbox of 100 messages, if the Two Minute Rule is strictly followed, would take a maximum of 50 minutes. Each email gets one-touch handling if it’s less than two minutes; otherwise it’s deleted, delegated or deferred (hence the instruction to “deliberately avoid taking immediate action” on longer items).

Realistically, processing 100 messages takes far less time. Some messages will be instantly recognized as deletable. Some messages will take a few seconds to determine whether or not they’re actionable, and if so, what action needs to be taken on it. Some quick-action messages will take all of two minutes, but others will take a fraction of that time (30 seconds is a long time for some replies). If, after two minutes, the point of the email is still vague but seems actionable, file it in @Action write make reading the email a next action on your @Computer list.

The Two Minute Rule: in dogma and principle

The two-minute length for immediate action is a dogma designed for convenience. The principle is that if an action is sufficiently short, it’s more efficient to do it in the moment than to write it down, review, then do it later. The heavier the workload, the shorter the length should be. If you regularly get 300 email a day, you’re probably better off making it a one-minute rule. If you get 30 email a day, you can probably get away with five minutes per message.

Whatever length you decide, make the decision up front before attacking your inbox. Having a set maximum length prevents you from getting lost in the content of the current message. What often happens when “checking” email is that someone allows the perceived urgency of a new message to consume his or her attention exclusively, resulting in a string of serial digressions that leave the remaining messages unattended.

Email doesn’t land in our inbox in order of priority. Spending 15 minutes on an important email might be a poor use of time if the next email is even more important. The only way to prioritize email is to process every message in the inbox first. The Two Minute Rule is designed to ensure that you get through all messages before spending excessive time on any one of them.

The dreaded @Action folder

You’ve gotten all the minutiae out of the way, and now you’re left with the items that represent real work. Welcome to life. There’s no trick to dealing with it, unless you’re prepared to outsource your life. Whether you processed your email or checked it, you would have had to get to these items anyway. But now, instead of wondering what needs to be done, you know what needs to be done.

What’s the advantage of processing?

Processing seems to take longer than haphazardly checking email because the time spend isn’t scattered. You’re not revisiting the same messages several times. You’re not “sort of” deciding on what to do about an email; you’re finishing the loop. And to repeat: everything in your inbox needs to be handled anyway. So handle it once instead of checking it a dozen times by the afternoon.

When you’ve processed your inbox, you have a list of precisely what to do about any outstanding work. Because people who check email leave some or many items undecided, even when they’re away from the computer, their minds are still in their inbox. With processing, you recognize that the only way out of the inbox is through it.

(Photo credit: Somewhat Frank)