The Lazy Genius Podcast - #284 - How to Lazy Genius Email

Episode Date: October 17, 2022

Oh, man, have we been waiting a long time for this one! This is a highly requested topic, and I’m excited for us to walk through how to make email inboxes more manageable and less stressful.   Helpful Companion Links The Lazy Genius Kitchen (affiliate link) Episode #91: The Lazy Genius Organizes Paper The Holiday Docket  Santa’s Bag app (iOS) Download a transcript of this episode.   This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, you're listening to the Lazy Genius podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is episode 284. How to Lazy Genius email. Oh man, have we been waiting a long time for this one? This is a highly requested topic and I am very excited for us to walk through how to make email inboxes more manageable and less stressful. So here's how this is going to work. Whenever we lazy genius something, we always want to be. to start with what matters, right? And we're still going to do that. We're still going to do that today. I also think it's super helpful to walk through the five steps to Lazy Genius Anything. Those five steps were originally explained and applied to the kitchen in my book, The Lazy Genius Kitchen. It is a manual for living in the kitchen, but it's also a manual for living your life because those five steps, they work just about everywhere. So if you have not tried that book, I encourage you to. It's also super pretty. But I'm going to encourage you to apply the five steps. on your own if going through the full process feels extra helpful to this. But in this episode,

just to keep it simple, I'm going to share a list of likely priorities that you might have about your email inbox and then share a few ideas that can make it work better for you. We are going to apply just a handful of lazy genius principles here and there. And hopefully that will come fairly close to solving your frustrations or at least prime the pump as you get more specific in applying the five steps to your own situation after you listen. So let's jump into lazy genius and email. When I listed out all the things that could matter about email, the list was actually pretty short.

I was surprised. Now, obviously, I am one person with one set of experiences, and I cannot name every priority here. I'm sure I'm going to miss something. But I do think a majority of you will resonate with one of these priorities. tending to email quickly or thinking about it like no red numbers, no numbers, no notification numbers, organization, or being able to find what you need when you need it, boundaries, and quality of life, or just being less annoyed with email in general, right? So tending to email quickly,

organization, boundaries, and quality of life. First, let's talk about tending to email quickly or having no red numbers, no red numbers. So last night I looked at my husband's phone and I saw the red number 642 on his email app and I almost vomited on my new couch. I was like, listen, this is not a new situation by the way, nor is my reaction surprising. You know, his phone is always like that. It always looks like that. And I'm always appalled by it. I am a no red number person, like on everything. I'm almost an inbox zero person, like where I don't want anything in. there. That is my priority. I value a quiet email inbox. My husband does not. And that is okay. So before we get too far into anything, it's okay if you have different priorities than other people do.

You don't have to put your priorities on them, just like they don't have to put their priorities on you. You can be an inbox zero person without being uptight. And someone else, like my husband, can have a huge red number on their app and it doesn't make them an unorganized. troll, you know? We're all just people living based on what matters to us, and that is good. That is good. One other thing I forgot to mention, actually, as we walk through these priorities, you might have one priority for your work email and a different priority for your personal email. That is totally normal, and that actually might be why you want to prioritize boundaries, because you have to be at work with your email in one way, and you don't really want to be that way at home, right?

So just pay attention to that distinction. If you're feeling a little conflict about like, what is my priority? It may be that you're approaching work in email, work in home email differently. So just pay attention to that if it's there. Okay, so inbox zero people, no red number people, tending to email quickly people. Ready? A great principle to start with when it comes to efficient email practices, which that's really what this is about. is put everything in its place. One of the reasons we can struggle with efficiency and tending to our email is that everything has a similar sense of urgency.

So if an email is unread, if that red number goes up, a tick, you know, it carries urgency simply because our priority is to get rid of that red number or that unread email as soon is possible. We are, we're kind of held hostage by our desire to reduce that email clutter. So one of the best ways to fulfill that desire without being totally attached at the hip with your inbox and like responding to every email as it comes in is to put everything in its place. Now, what do I mean by everything? There are a few everythings in this scenario. One, let's put the urgency in its place. There have been seasons in my life where seeing unread emails created almost like a tick in my body. It's like I could not function without that

inbox being clear. Now, if you resonate with that, you might have a similar energy in your home with your stuff. You cannot rest unless things are put away. Now, one way that our stuff differs from our email is that our stuff, it can be put away. And then unless we have small children or pets or something that just keep dragging stuff out again. Once we tidy and rest in a space, it'll stay tidy for a little bit. Now with email, we do not have that luxury. It's just going keep coming, right? So we need to put the urgency that we feel in its proper place. So I want you to listen to me, no red number friends. You ready? You can have unread emails. You can have the red number on your app. You do not have to swing to the other side of where you are. You

and like never delete anything again. That's not what I'm saying. But a lot of times our grip on something like email is really a grip on control. It's wanting things to fall in line and be a certain way. And you just do not have to be at the mercy of the urgency of email, especially self-inflicted urgency. It's going to keep coming no matter what you do. So practice putting that attempt to control in its place.

Now, if you do love being a no red numbers person, And you practically want some tips on how to do that here, just a couple. First, put a response time in place. Maybe while your kid is taking a bath, or while you're stuck in traffic, or on the train on your way home from work, or you're sitting in the parking lot waiting for your grocery pickup. You can carve out a short window of time, just a few minutes, where you go through and you do like a first pass of your email and you delete or archive what's no longer relevant. Okay. Now, for emails that require a response, but a quick one that doesn't require like extra information or energy, you can respond and archive those too. But recognize that there are emails that you'll need

to come back to, right? That's part of the problem. Not everything can be answered or managed in the Walmart parking lot. Some things need more time, which leads me to the second tip. If I read an email that requires more than I'm able to give it in that moment, I go back and mark it unread again. then I plan a time to respond. But using some kind of visual, whether it's leaving the message unread or using a star or a flag or a folder to create a place for a certain kind of email that requires a certain amount of energy and then creating a place in your day to deal with it is just a really great use of that principle of putting everything in its place. So that's the first priority. No red numbers, tending to things quickly, right? Put everything in its place.

The second priority that we can consider is the priority of organization or finding what you need when you need it. Now you can super dupe apply, put everything in its place to this one as well. But for me, this is where I apply the principle of decide once. And you know what I've decided? Use Gmail. Why? Why is that? This is just for me. I'm not saying you should do that. I'm just saying this is for me. Because Gmail's search function is out of bounds. And as long as I archive instead of deleting things that could be important later, I can find anything at any time. I tried folders. I've tried color coding things for a long time. I tried tags and labels, but those things did not work for me. That system was too big and too clunky. Instead, I would just

find myself like saying out loud to no one. Where is that email from Lisa about the contract? And then I just search the words Lisa contract and I get the email. I think with email, we can sometimes think that there needs to be like a sophisticated organizational approach. And there is a place for that. There absolutely is. Your job, it might require folders and flags and colors. And I'm all for that. I'm just speaking to the people who think that that is the only way to be organized. You can let your email platform do the organizing for you by just using the search function and letting them find where the email is instead of remembering what folder you put it in or what tag you gave it. Does that make sense?

Now, another way of looking at organizing your email and finding what you need when you need it is it's almost the same concept as the episode about organizing paper. The helpful way to lazy genius paper is by thinking of your paper storage in zones. Okay. You have zones or places for different kinds of paper or more specifically, papers with different urgencies. Okay. Now, with paper, you cannot have one giant basket of paper.

of varying urgencies or else you're going to miss something or lose something or forget to pay a bill or, you know, go to a wedding or something like that. So papers, and in this case emails, that need more immediate attention, they need a smaller, more obvious zone, okay? For paper bills, and this is all in the episode about organizing paper, for me, it's a small basket by my keys, okay? It's one small place for things that are more urgent. I don't have to sift through everything. to find it, right? Now for email, like I said already, it's leaving just a handful of emails unread so that I can see what requires my attention, you know, something similar. The same is true for things that don't require immediate attention or urgency. They need a place too. Now, that basket or zone,

it can be much larger for paper and email because there's no urgency attached to it, right? You just get to it when you get to it or you find what you need when it's necessary. But what's great about an email inbox compared to a basket of actual paper that you have to sort through is that you don't have to sort through email. It does it for you. Your email inbox, it's like that giant basket of paper but with an intelligent filing system that you can't see. So whenever you need to find something,

you just type in the word and like poof, it appears. Now, sometimes it appears along with two dozen other possibilities. So because of this, I always delete what really doesn't matter and then I archive what might. that way, when I search, there are fewer results to choose from since truly unessential things have already been deleted completely, right? We'll be right back. Aw isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of

happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Third, let's talk about boundaries. You might value boundaries as the highest priority for email because you have to be on email a lot for work and you don't want to bring that home, like physically or mentally. So maybe you have a bar. boss or a team at work that has different personal boundaries around email than you do. And you kind of have to fight against the pattern that they've set, that anyone can email anyone at any time and expect a response. So sometimes we create boundaries against our own decisions, and sometimes they are for someone

else's decisions. In both cases, I think this is the hardest priority to consistently handle with kindness and consistency. If we have email boundaries for our own personal habits, it's really easy to beat ourselves up when we do not align with what we wish we were doing. Shaming ourselves is always right there. It's always a breath away. And if we are creating boundaries because other people in our lives don't have boundaries, that's a whole relational can of worms that can also be hard to navigate, especially if it's happening at your job and you need your job to pay your bills. So enlisting this priority with the others, boundaries, I'm actually not really giving it equal weight. I want to acknowledge boundaries are hard. So if that's what you're personally struggling with when it

comes to email, I'm really sorry about that. It's tough. It is. But let's see if we can't do something to make it just a tiny, tiny bit easier. Now, for some of you, urgency is part of your job. Okay? Emails how your company communicates. And so everything is kind of urgent. It is hard to get rid of company culture, you know? However, you could, in certain scenarios, you could talk with your supervisor about expectations around email. You could create an auto response that you turn on during certain hours of the day that says, you know, when you'll be back in your inbox, you could always keep it in your email signature, you know, like when you respond to emails. You can remove your work email from your phone when you are not at work so you won't check it.

and, you know, therefore be tempted to just answer this one real quick email at 9 o'clock at night. But see, because what happens when you do that is your coworker gets that email and responds back and now you're at work again, you know? So basically just try and pay attention to the times that you engage in your work email, just this one time real quick, you know, pay attention to that because those one times, they add up to a person who slowly gets burned out by their job. Okay. Now what about personal boundaries? The internet and our phones, they have programmed our brains into thinking that we need to know what we're missing at every moment, you know, at every stoplight, at every spare bit of silence. And even though this is a community that does tend to have from what you tell me, like a decent relationship with the internet, and that is a very possible thing, right?

It does take a lot of work and intention to break free of that. It does. So personal boundaries are not easy either. There are a lot of things built into. to a lot of our smartphones that can help with that, like downtime or time limits on apps or certain there are certain things. It's just like they give you like a cute little slap on your wrist if you try to open a certain app outside of a designated time. Now I have downtime set on my phone and here's what I've learned about that. If I set a downtime or a limit just to hit the buttons

that override the limit, it's not doing anything for me. If I set the limit and I don't consistently honor the limit, what's the point of even setting the limit? So if you create some kind of personal boundary around your email and that matters to you, I want you to practice honoring that limit. This is not a shaming thing, but practice honoring the limit. Otherwise, the visual of the limit that the phone creates for you, it's just not going to mean anything. Most things that are urgent, they're probably not coming through your email anyway, and they can wait until tomorrow. I know it doesn't seem like that. It also doesn't seem like checking your email at night a few times is a big deal. And for some of you, it might not be. It actually might not be. Like, if boundaries are not

your priority, this is not a big deal. But if it is a bigger deal, if it does matter, if it genuinely feels important to you, I am here to tell you that those quick checks here and there, at the expense of your boundaries, it does cause harm. Not like emotional harm or, you know, you don't have to bring it to your therapist next week. But that constant ignoring of your boundaries, it harms your boundaries themselves. So one final idea for boundaries is to turn off your notifications. I only get notifications for texts, phone calls, Voxer, and weirdly Netflix, like literally my phone, it's next to me and it just popped up with an alert for Netflix to let me know that Dairy Girl Season 3 is now on Netflix. And you know what I'm going to stop and do right now? Like I'm going to turn off as I'm typing this out.

I'm going to turn off those Netflix notifications. I had them on, I think when I was waiting for stranger things or something. But those alerts are not worth the exchange of my attention that is required. So I'm going to turn them off. Now you get to decide what your notification situation is. It might not bother you in the slightest. But I'm here to tell you that a great way to set good boundaries with your email inbox is to not see each and every email on your home screen. Set a time to check your inbox instead. And only do that if the energy is available to you. to triage those emails and put them in their place, right? Responding to each ping, it is a recipe for hating your email.

And then finally, the priority of your quality of life slash like we just want to be less annoyed around email. This is one of the simplest ideas, simplest simplest, simplest, but the number of messages that I get daily about simple ideas that I've shared here that people like just forgot existed. It's very high, right? So here we go with the simplest of ideas. This is your tip for being less annoyed by your email. Get fewer emails.

Google does this thing where it will sometimes like offer a prompt in my Gmail app that says something like, hey, you haven't opened an email from Lanzin in a while. Would you like to unsubscribe? And I almost always say, yes, please do that for me. Google, thank you so much. And then it does. I also enjoy the natural division that Gmail creates with a promotions folder and a social folder. and then my primary folder, right? Almost always, the real emails that I actually need, they do go to my primary folder. But if you are annoyed by all the pings, turn off your email

notifications. And if you like a world with less email, subscribe to fewer emails. Now, you don't have to do it all at once. In fact, I highly recommend you do not do that. That's like big black trash bag energy. And it's not necessary. But when you get a new email and you see who it's from and you sigh or you roll your eyes or you get annoyed, I want you to scroll to the bottom of that email and unsubscribe. Just do it right then for that one email. It'll maybe take 10 seconds and then you're free of that one, right? Start small. You do not owe anyone your email address. You don't. Okay, so as a wrap up, remember that a big system, it's not the answer here. I actually started to create the episode with a big system and it wasn't working. It wasn't working. So that means it's not going to

work in real life either. If we can't make it an episode, it's not going to work in your real life. So here's what I want you to do. Ask yourself, what is the thing about your email that gets on your nerves the most? That's going to help you see what matters the most. Then try one simple thing to make that a little bit better. Start small. Maybe there's an idea from this episode that will help or maybe something that you heard inspired a different idea. I also realize that one idea is not going to change everything. You know, that's usually not a thing. But if you try, try one small thing, and then another small thing. And then another one after that a little bit later. You slowly create a relationship with email that does work for you. It does become a system that

works. You just don't build the system all at once from the beginning. So maybe stop seeking after the big system and instead start small with one idea at a time that matches what matters to you. Now, if you would like to create a more extensive approach, you know, if that just is, it's a huge, it's a huge trouble spot for you, your email, you can try applying the five steps to lazy geniusing anything to your email. Number one, prioritize or name what matters. Number two, essentialize or get rid of what's in the way. Three, organize or put everything in its place. Four, personalize or feel like yourself. And five, systemize or stay in a flow. Remember All of those steps are used often in these podcast episodes, but they are all in the greatest

detail in my book, The Lazy Genius Kitchen. Okay, before we go, let's celebrate the lazy genius of the week. This week, it's Christy Pino, who shared a tip that I think we all might enjoy using as we get into November and closer to the gift-giving holidays. Christy wrote, I use an app called Santa's Bag to track my holiday gifts. You can set a budget for the season or for individual recipients. You can manage ideas you have for people where you purchased a gift from and even where you stashed the gift, especially helpful if you are someone who hides gifts from your kids and then can't

remember where you put them. I've used it for several years and it definitely reduces my holiday stress. Listen, anything that can reduce holiday stress sounds like an excellent, excellent plan. I looked at this app and I promptly downloaded it. It seems really great. So check it out if you need a gift giving resource. Another holiday season resource that you might want to consider if you haven't yet is the holiday docket. The holiday docket is a lazy genius product. It is available in our digital store and it is a path to help you celebrate this busy season. Well, it is our best selling thing we've ever made by a significant margin. And people say it not only makes their holidays less stressful, but actually more fun and focused on what matters. It is very thorough.

It is a process that you go through. It's really fun. It has undated, calendars so you can buy it once and reuse it year after year, just print it out each year. As she does every week, so so kindly, Leah will put a link to that in the show notes so you can check it out. And for the gift giving part, maybe you can follow Christy's advice and try Santa's back. It's got a lot of reviews. It really does seem awesome. I especially love the part where you can put where you stored something because I always forget my hiding spots. Like truly, multiple years. I've just found gifts like in March that I didn't know where they were. they were there. Like no more. We're not doing that anymore. So thanks for the tip, Christy,

and for being the lazy genius of the week. All right, y'all, that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra. I'll see you next week. If you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life, it's so dangerous to live that more dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A-plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.