Quick Win: How break out of the email cycle trap

Do you find yourself set up for a productive day, only to be derailed by your emails?

Checking and replying to emails can eat up so much time - and what’s worse is that the false sense of productivity checking email provides can be very addictive.

The problem of spending way too much time in my inbox has been bugging me for some time, so I was very excited to find out that Michael Bungay Stanier has had similar problems and has been working on solutions.

Michael is a renowned speaker, teacher and author whose books have sold over 1.5 million copies. In fact, his best known book, The Coaching Habit, topped the Wall Street Journal bestseller list with Brenè Brown calling it “a classic”. He was named #1 Thought Leader in Coaching by Thinkers50, and has been featured in top publications like Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Fast Company.

Michael is clearly very busy and can’t afford to waste time on emails, yet he still finds himself procrastinating with them.

But he has a lot of strategies and tricks that we might be able to use.

Michael shares:

• Why we get stuck in the cycle of emails even when we know we shouldn’t
• The techniques and programs we can use to reduce email use
• Why you might need to use incentives and consequences to enforce your email reduction strategies.

Listen to the full interview here.

Connect with Michael via his website, Instagram, LinkedIn, or buy the Do Something That Matters Journal.

 

My latest book The Health Habit is out now. You can order a copy here: https://www.amantha.com/the-health-habit/

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Credits:

Host: Amantha Imber

Sound Engineer: The Podcast Butler

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Do you find yourself set up for a productive day
only to be derailed by your emails? Checking and replying
to emails always takes up more time than expected and
can really bog us down and derail productivity. The problem
of spending way too much time in my inbox has
been bugging me for some time, so I was very

(00:21):
excited to find out that Michael Bungay Stania has had
similar problems and has been working on solutions. Michael is
the Wall Street Journal best selling author of The Coaching Habit,
which Brene Brown called a classic with over one point
five million books sold. Michael was named the number one
thought leader in coaching by Thinkers fifty and his insights

(00:44):
have transformed how leaders all around the world work. He's
clearly very busy and can't afford to waste time on emails,
yet he still finds himself procrastinating with them. But he
has a lot of strategies and tricks that we can
all benefit from using. Welcome to How I Work, a

(01:09):
show about habits, rituals, and strategies for optimizing your day.
I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber. On today's Quick Win episode,
we go back to an interview from the past and
reveal a quick win. But this one was actually so
special that we kept it out of the main episode

(01:29):
so we could share it with you today. To start,
I asked Michael about his experience being stuck in the
email cycle and how he's working to break free from it.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Like, I'm struggling a little bit to know how to
break it, because I'm learning that, you know, for sure,
one of the ways to break email addictions stop sending emails,
because emails sent create emails that respond to it. But
you know, I have too many email accounts, Like I
have one for NBS dot Works, I have one for

(02:04):
Boxer Crowns, a company I started. I have one a Gmail,
one for personal. I have one for change Signal, a
new project that I'm launching. So one is I've got
too many email boxes anyway, But that's not the real problem.
The real problem is I will go to answering email
as a form of busyness. It's relatively easy. I can

(02:28):
work hard at my screen and go tap tap, tap tap,
and I can have small little hits of dopamine as
I make progress, and I hit send on a bunch
of things. But do I want to die and have
on my grave. Michael managed his email quite well. At times,
I'm like, that's that's not kind of aspirational for me,

(02:49):
but I notice just how comforting it is. I just
noticed that because I run my own organization and I'm
the boss, in some ways, I can dream about email
in a way that some people, Paul won't be able
to dream about email. But what I know is that
I am outstanding at hacking every system I set up
to try and protect me from email. So you know,

(03:10):
I have I think called Mailman, which means that the
email only gets delivered three times a day. But I
know how to hack that. So if I need to
kind of get it, I can do that. I use Superhuman,
which helps you get faster and email, and that's helpful
as well, but I still spend a lot of time
doing my email on Superhuman. So literally, just before this call,

(03:33):
I was with Claudine is my assistant, and I'm like Claudine.
But March is fairly open. The goal is by the
end of March, I am not the first touch on
any single email. Everything gets kind of worked through you first,
and then I get what's left over. Now I don't
know what that looks like, because I'm like, in Claudine,

(03:54):
you need to set the rules on this, because if
I set the rules, I break the rules and I'm
a nightmare. So I've just asked the guy, so let's
go away, and I have you draft to first go
at this, which is what's the process, what's the system
that will keep me out of email? What's the price
I pay for breaking the rules? Because part of the

(04:14):
challenge for me is because I'm the founder, there's no
price for disobedience. Every guy's oh, Michael, he's just you know,
he'll do whatever he wants. He's such a maverick, and
I'm like, it's terrible. I need there to be a price.
So it's like, what is it? Is it? Like, Michael,
you have to donate five hundred dollars every time you

(04:35):
answer an email before it's been assigned to you, Like
that would be a high incentive not to do email
if it's costing me five hundred dollars a pop. Because
I'm like, yeah, I like it, but I don't like
it that much. So we need to have a think
about consequences for me misbehaving. So there's me confessing that
are my struggles with email you're up against that as well.

(04:57):
What lessons are you learning? What's your best current wid
and how to manage email?

Speaker 1 (05:01):
I mean a really simple one. I also use Superhuman.
Is that I just don't open Superhuman. If Superhuman is
not open on my computer, it's kind of a hassle
to wait the five seconds for the software to reboot
and open itself and load all the emails. And that
is enough of a barrier to go. Do I really

(05:24):
need to be in my inbox? I think where I
come unstuck is when I need to find something in
my inbox or when I need to send something. Let's
just say I had a task to do that was
maybe a deep sprint in the morning that was put

(05:44):
together a proposal for a client, and then I want
closure on that task, which involves sending the email, and
to do that. I used to have a little plug
into Chrome when I was on the Google ecosystem, but
I haven't found an equivalent now that we're on the
Microsoft ecosystem and Superhuman does have a plug in you,
It's like it's all or nothing. You open your inbox
or you keep it closed. Whereas there used to be

(06:04):
this great Chrome plug in. I can't remember what it
was called, which is not very helpful. But you hit
a button, it would open a compose email window and
then you could send the window without getting into your
inbox and that saved me a lot of inbox time.
So that's where I come unstuck. Where the deep work
thing that I'm working on or need to finish, I
need to open up Superhuman and that's a problem that

(06:28):
I need to solve for right now.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
I mean, the challenges is like more efficient for me
makes less efficient for somebody else. Like I could draft
a whole bunch of things in Google say or something
like that, and go Ake Claudine, I've drafted the emails,
can you now paste them into the email and send
them on my behalf? And that would save me from

(06:51):
getting into inbox stuff, but would also mean Claudina is
now doing stuff which just doesn't feel particularly rewarding for her.
Oh great, I get to cut and paste Michael's emails
into an email thing. So anyway, I'll be delighted to
see what she comes up with in terms of trying
to save me from myself.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
That's interesting. I feel like that's maybe a hack that
I can try because Jem and I will typically communicate
on Microsoft teams Chat, and I'm not addicted to that
at all. I could go for days without checking that.
I have to remind myself to be in teams Chat.
But also it's a good way to not be in
my inbox but communicate with Jem. And so maybe that's

(07:31):
the thing. Maybe I just I pace the email there
because for Jem it would take her two minutes out
of her day. And I might try that. I might
try that clauding.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
And I do. There's a bunch of emails that I
have not yet figured out how to access, and I'm
trying not to hack that system. So when we have
our meetings, we meet for an hour start an end
of the week. She'll walk me through a bunch of
inquiries or emails that have come in for me, and
I'll go respond like this, and she'll make some notes

(08:01):
and then she'll send those emails off and I don't
get to see them. That works really well. So maybe
there is a precedent which is like, actually, I'll just
give you notes and you can compose the email on
my behalf.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
I hope you enjoyed this little quick win with Michael.
If you would like to listen to my full interview
with him. You can find a link to that in
the show notes. If you like today's show, make sure
you get follow on your podcast app to be alerted
when new episodes drop. How I Work was recorded on
the traditional land of the Warrangery people, part of the
Cooler Nation.