As a self-employed marketer, I have lived and died by email for the past 10 years. It’s been at the center of my business and personal life for everything from sales to socializing. But over the past year or two, the daily flow of email has become totally unmanageable. Something had to be done. I took bold action. So why do I feel guilty?
My incoming email is down to a trickle since I added this autoresponder:
Dear colleagues & friends: I am checking email only a couple of times a day because I am totally overwhelmed with unnecessary emails.
So, if something is pressing, please call me.
If not, understand that I will be back to you in hours rather than minutes.
Thank you!
B.L.
Notice that I did not include my phone number because it is easily available on my blog and my site and I don’t want junk phone calls either. But jeez, what if I never read that one email with the life-changing client inquiry?
I identified completely with John Gruber at Daring Fireball, joining the rising tide when he wrote about email bankruptcy:
“My habits and message filing strategies had more or less remained the same for the entire 15 years I’d been using email. My problem … is that I now receive far, far more email than I could possibly deal with using my long-established strategies and habits.”
Taking what he, Merlin Mann, James Duncan Davidson and others have recommended, here’s what I’ve done besides add the autoresponder: I created a system.
o I turned off the sound that signals incoming emails.
o I check it first thing in the morning.
o I respond, delete or file immediately and delete the rest, unread.
o I repeat this procedure only three or four more times a day instead of continually.
o Unsubscribing to publications has had no effect, so I junk the ones I don’t want.
o I ignore emails that don’t have a compelling subject line.
o I don’t go through the “junk” folder for things mistakenly caught there.
o i figure, if it’s important, it’ll come again. Or the person will call me.
And yet, I feel guilty. I feel rude. I wonder if some potential business has been lost because I sound un-accomodating.
And now that there’s less email, I keep thinking I’m going to miss something.
Oy vey.
This picture could have been me until Monday:
This is me now: 
(OK, so I have more than one email account, but my Gmail inbox is empty.) /em>
thanks for the great post!
i’m curious what people think is a lot of email to receive? just as a frame of reference i suppose… i just did a tot up of everything i’ve received today and it was 450 emails.
email is my ‘thing’ – i’ve never felt that bankrupt feeling some are mentioning – and i don’t think my filing habits have changed since 1996. in the mornings i do have some (big) twinges of annoyance in weeding out the really annoying bunches of really junky spam. but other then that it feels doable.
HOWEVER.. there’s a recurring excellent suggestion that comes up again and again, and i have taken it on board: to STOP checking email all the time! this is something i’m guilty of. i rush to look at what just came in – every time… and i think it adds to the feeling of being overwhelmed. and it most definitely is responsible for distracting and preventing tasks from getting smoothly completed.
the other, in a spot check around the office, i noticed alot of my colleagues don’t have many folders, and don’t move emails into them – and keep everything in their inbox.. i think that leads to feeling overwhelmed as well.
denise – i’ve been getting upwards of 750 emails a day for months. i have spam filters at the server level and in Entourage and on Google, but none of them are perfect.
i no longer look at the ones they accidentally put in junk.I just zap them, and figure it’s not meant for me to get that mail. :>)
I do have folders, but i don’t store email there. If it’s something i really need to save, i put it in word, or excel or wherever it is supposed to go, with a very exacting file name in a sub-folder that iwill hopefully remember.
but i still consider my inbox clean when it’s got 300 emails in it. so obviously, something is wrong with my system. or my brain.
it is just all too much. and the biggest problem is that people send 20 emails when one call would suffice.
i’m just ignoring those now. i answer the first one “call me pls” or “I’ll call you” and don’t check email again for a few hours.
sooner or later that will change client behavior I guess.
maybe they’ll go hire someone who answers their 50 emails an hour more often.
“And yet, I feel guilty. I feel rude. I wonder if some potential business has been lost because I sound un-accomodating.”
. Guilt is a terrible way to feel. Happy holiday email-less weekend!
If you feel you’re being rude, it’s a good rule of thumb (be it life or biz) to go with your gut. I find my gut is a very good guide. So…how about adjusting the message (copy/tone) a bit…you know, test it (we’re marketers after all, testing is a great tool). Plus, now that your email is down so low you have time to try a different message here and there. Try a few different messages over the next few weeks and then you might not worry and find the right balance.
Hope that helped
CK – I feel better about it all the time. I’m following Ike Pigott’s Dr Pepper Plan – check email only at 10, 2 and 4. http://occamsrazr.com/2007/08/29/dr-pepper-cured-my-inbox/
:>)
BL
CK – I already went with my gut, which was to create the autoresponder. I feel better about it all the time. I’m following Ike Pigott’s Dr Pepper Plan – check email only at 10, 2 and 4. http://occamsrazr.com/2007/08/29/dr-pepper-cured-my-inbox/
And I’m getting phone calls that are really fun.
:>)
BL
“because I am totally overwhelmed with unnecessary emails.”
At the risk of being rude myself by critiquing without being asked to, this is the phrase that made me squirm a bit. Sort of sounds like things are in complete chaos behind the scenes. If I were a potential client and saw this, it would make me hesitate. Maybe a more positive slant alluding to the fact that you prefer to do business by phone or in person but you do check emails periodically. Just a thought. Have a good weekend.
I hope you don’t think this is the first mention i made of this to clients and friends. it’s the 100th. the first 99 were very polite and positive. they also didn’t work.
it’s not email that is the problem, it is the way some people use it. i have clients where i deal with three or four people in a company and sometimes each of them will send me 25 emails in a day.
i’m one person. i can’t answer 100 unnecessary emails from one client.
it’s just too damn easy to press send. people need to think first.
most often what’s needed instead of 25 emails is a phone call or instant messaging.
i got so much more done this week with less email bouncing around than i have in recent months. and i think it will only get better.
i respond to many emails now by saying “i’ll call you” or “call me to discuss” but I don’t put my answer in email.
that’s not chaos jeff, that’s the path to organization.
ok, i re-wrote my autoresponder:
Subject line: I’m checking email much less often.
Dear colleagues & friends:
I am checking email only a couple of times a day because I am overwhelmed by the more than 700 emails I have been getting daily for the last several months. I simply cannot believe they are all necessary.
So, if something is pressing, please call me, or IM me.
If you send email, please understand that I may be back to you in hours rather than minutes.
Thank you!
B.L.
BL, I’m in shock. 750 e-mails a day! That needs more than an, “Oy vey!”
Oy gevalt!
I can’t even fathom beginning to handle that volume. Plus, you have blogs to manage. When do you: work? play? relax? eat?
“I hope you don’t think this is the first mention i made of this to clients and friends. it’s the 100th. the first 99 were very polite and positive.”
Ah, that makes much more sense now. I pictured you toiling away every day with your emails until you finally got frustrated and created your auto-response without mentioning your problem to clients and friends. Sorry for the confusion.
Elaine: That’s eggzactally what led me to take this step.
Unnecessary emails were taking up an inordinate, and generally unbillable amount of time.
I think you’ll find more and more people saying “no more!” to email.
It’s too damn easy to hit “send” without thinking.
Half the emails are people saying stuff like “thanks” “ttyl” and other small talk after the task or conversation is done. and sometimes, those go back and forth 10 times. i just won’t play that game.
Jeff: pretty big assumption! I should have made that more clear to begin with i guess.
By and large, I love email. Yes, it can be too much at times but it is a fantastic tool both for business and personal.
I keep in regular touch with some friends and business associates through email. I have family and friends that live in far flung places, and email has really made it possible to keep up with their lives better. Perfect? No.
Sometimes it is definitely better to pick up the phone! Do it WITHOUT DELAY when you have not spoken to someone important in your life for too long.
Zapping legitimate mail that gets placed in your Junk folder is foolhardy in my opinion — unless, despite the volume of messages you receive, you don’t conduct much business through email.
I don’t even use a junk folder. I have a public address and a private address. With no spam at my private address, every message is from a colleague, client, or prospective client.
Also, I believe most legitimate email newsletter publishers have unsubscribe mechanisms that work. You do realize that you’re posting in a blog operated by a major email newsletter publisher?
I know what you mean. I guess I can’t relate to the “feeling rude” part, because I never see Internet communication as authentic communication anyways. If the e-mail is that important, he/she should have called me or talked to me in person.
But what I DO feel is that same looming question: “WHAT IF I’M MISSING THAT LIFE-CHANGING CLIENT INQUIRY?”
So I sit back, calm down, and tell myself that life is not about trying to take advantage of every single opportunity. We live in America. There are a TON of opportunities. You can’t catch them all. You can’t be everything. You have to pick and choose.
You lose a LOT of opportunities without email. That is how a LOT of business is conducted these days. Check.