Email management: Inbox Hero

Reduce the amount of email you get

Much like life, a lot of the emails you get aren’t in your control, but some of them are and before you try to manage the volume, the first thing is to try and reduce the volume.

1. Only use your work email for work. If you’re using your work email for Amazon or non-work related email lists, switch them over to a personal email. I once saw the inbox of someone who complains about their email constantly and it was half full of personal Uber receipts and shopping orders and I lost quite a lot of sympathy quite quickly. Some services require you to use your academic email address to get discounts or access so of course this suggestion (and all the others) is applicable where possible.

2. Turn off email notifications unless absolutely necessary. The two worst offenders for this for me are Teams and LinkedIn. By default, they will send you an email about every post, comment, like, and notification. It is worth the time to go into the settings and turn them all off.

3. Ask students to use a shared space for non-private questions. We use Teams to communicate with students but a discussion forum would also work (although I have never been able to get on board with them). Whatever platform you use, you want a space where students can ask questions and everyone can see the answer. This cuts down on repeated questions, can be used to encourage peer support, and it results in students getting answers to questions they didn’t know they had. But you do have to enforce this rule for it to help your inbox. As Level 1 lead, I had zero tolerance from day 1, if a student emailed me privately with a question that did not require a private response they got something akin to “That’s a great question - please could you post this on Teams in the essay channel? As I’ve noted we don’t answer questions like this via private email or DM as many students have the same questions so it is useful for everyone to see the answer at once.” If you have a shared space for questions but then you still reply to private emails, all they learn is to email you individually.

4. Set up a shared space for project students. Related to the above, for my dissertation students I also use Teams and they each have a private channel where I ask them to communicate rather than sending me emails. This means that every communication from each student is in the same place, so I never risk losing it.

5. Provide clear course and assessment information. This sounds like I am being sanctimonious but I promise I’m not - the best way to make your life easier is to ensure that your students know what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. This won’t cut down all questions but spending time ensuring that you have e.g., weekly checklists and clear assessment briefs will save you time in the long-run, as well as improving the learning experience. If you get asked the same question via email three or more times, consider what it is telling you about what information you have made available and where (this isn’t always the answer, sometimes they just don’t read stuff).

6. Set up a booking system for meetings. Ideally you want something like Calendly or Microsoft Bookings, where people can book directly into your diary taking into account your availability. If it’s a group meeting, use Doodle or the Outlook scheduling assistant. But FOR THE LOVE OF GOD don’t try and schedule a group meeting by asking everyone to send emails with their availability until 301 emails later you finally stumble upon the time that works.

7. Use Bcc wisely. If you’re emailing a large group of people, Bcc the addresses to prevent reply-all-gates from occurring. The downside is that sometimes it is actually useful to see who else received the email (particularly if you’re being asked to cascade information) so this isn’t always the correct approach.

8. Use your Out-Of-Office. Aside from it being helpful to your colleagues and students to know when you are not available, you should use your OOO when you’re off because for several years now, Outlook and Teams displays your OOO status and people are just less likely to send you an email or DM when they can see you’re away (even without seeing exactly what the OOO says). But you can also use your OOO as an auto-reply. For example, when I was Level 1 lead, I knew that when releasing grades, I would get the same question again and again from students not reading the information about e.g., where to find their feedback, so before I hit release, I would set up an OOO with an auto-reply with answers to the most frequently asked questions. See also if Moodle went down just before a submission and a deluge of emails occurred - set up an auto-reply saying what was happening with extending the deadline. This suggestion doesn’t strictly reduce the number of emails you get, it reduces the number you have to send, but that leads to the next suggestion:

9. Send fewer emails. The more emails you send, the more you receive. By no means am I saying don’t do your job, I just mean that we are all guilty of sending an extra reply that doesn’t really need to be sent. Outlook implemented email reactions a few years back and this is actually quite a helpful way of acknowledging receipt without adding to volume.

10. Get a new job. I’m only partially kidding. I moved institution in 2018 and it was like a cleansing fire.

Keep as much out of your inbox as possible

I can’t imagine that too much of the above is too controversial, but I suspect the rest of my suggestions will have stronger preferential reactions. My tactic has always been to keep my inbox as minimal as possible, with both read and unread emails.

11. Use folders and automated rules. I don’t have a particularly sophisticated set of rules but they do direct a lot of traffic away from my main inbox. I have three main rules that mean anything that comes from a SEDA mailing list, journal alerts, and Moodle announcements go straight into their own folder rather than coming to my inbox. I almost never need to see this stuff immediately so I don’t want it drawing my attention and cluttering up my view.
12. Use folders to archive. I know there’s a school of thought that says folders are a waste of time and keeping everything in your inbox and using the search function or tags is the way to go, but those people are wrong. Once I have read and responded to (if necessary) an email, it gets moved to a folder. If it’s a longer-term, bigger bit of work than a simple reply, then I add an item to my to-do list and move it to a folder. The only emails in my inbox are those that still need actioned.

Checking and responding to email

13. Get rid of the small stuff immediately. If I get an email that I can answer immediately, I do. I’m not saying I respond to all emails immediately and to check them constantly, rather that when I do check my email, the low hanging fruit are immediately taken care of.
14. If I know that the task required by an email is going to take me longer than three working days, I reply with the above immediacy with an estimate of when I’ll complete the task so that the sender knows when to expect the response.
15. Turn your email off when necessary. Generally my email/Teams is always open, which I think will be the suggestion most people disagree with. But if I am doing a piece of work that requires focus and I want to get into a flow state (usually when I am writing) then I turn it off and the busier and more stressed I get, the more likely I am to turn it off and just check at specific points.
16. Respond in batches. The first item on my to-do list every day is to spend up to an hour clearing email and then Teams (in that order). I clear the low-hanging fruit and then transfer anything bigger to my to-do list. There are points in the semester where this isn’t enough but it makes a meaningful dent each day that it generally keeps on top of stuff. Throughout the day I then tend to do smaller batches of email in between tasks.
17. No phone notifications. About two weeks into teaching online in 2020 I turned off all email and Teams notifications for my phone - everything needs to be checked manually. I also don’t have any notifications come through to my smart watch, which a lot of people find surprising because let’s be honest, I am chronically online but even the thought of having my watch buzzing constantly makes me want to lie in a dark room.