EP 08: Inbox Zero
===
[00:00:00]
Welcome, welcome, welcome. We're back. Yes. Today we are talking about a topic inbox zero that I think Kirsten picked just for me because I might have told her and 150,000 unread emails between three different emails. That does not include one of my other emails. So, if you were like, and I thought you were being like, sarcastic.
No, I then showed it to her and she was like, wow. But the thing is, I mean, let's be fair, the title inbox zero, it's a bit misleading because it actually isn't about having literal zero emails. It can be, but for me it's just so much more about like the mental bandwidth and like emotional clutter and attention.
And how sometimes we use like our inboxes, like our to-do list or a report card. So I'm just curious about like, those were kind of my big takeaways before we get into the meat of it all, like [00:01:00] what was your biggest takeaway for this? Like, what do you think the book is about? I think it's exactly what you said.
It's about managing your attention. Although it is a way that you could put your inbox down to zero, it is not the most important part. It's about not getting distracted by the email. And many of us, I love the quote, I don't even think it's from this book, but the idea that emails are just somebody else's to-dos, that they're asking for you to put on your list.
And I was like, oh yeah, those don't actually have to be my priorities, just 'cause somebody else sent me an email, but they're having an emergency. So it's really about the amount of time that the inbox is occupying your brain. Yeah. And I think that it really helps develop a kind of system so that you're able to make fast decisions when you're looking at stuff so that it just starts.
'cause emails are kind of like, pudding, you know, where they just kind of ooze everywhere and go everywhere or the blob or whatever horror movie you're into. But for me, just having those kind of like pathway so that it's like you're funneling and pipelines and just figuring stuff out so that you know where to put stuff [00:02:00] out so that you're actually working in your lane of brilliance.
When your brain is the most fired up and you're able to do some of the lower task items when your brain is just fried. Yeah I think your blob pudding analogy is not one that I had really come to me when I read the book, but I do honestly think it's about getting it outta your brain. I'm not sure about the blob and the pudding.
I'm actually literally still over here pondering that, maybe not thinking quickly enough today. But I do like the idea that you just said, like, don't look at the same email twice. 'cause what you've basically done is double the amount of email in your box. Mm-hmm. so if you, and you have this image of it, like you coming to the epiphany of pud like during Thanksgiving, and you're just sitting there and you just announce it to your whole family.
So what am I announcing in box zero? It's like pudding. And you'll just like, haha, it will hit you like that. Yeah. Oh, so pudding is like the big, exciting thing, is that what you're telling me? No, it's just this fluid thing that gets away from you. You know, it's like just if you go [00:03:00] everywhere and so you wanna make sure that you have these like gutter ball, like when you go bowling, how they have the little things you can pop up, you want those so that everything is kind of on in systems so that you're not justically having to make those decisions every single time.
That makes sense. Do you have a VA help you with your inbox, Stacy? Not really. I have the intention of having a VA help me with my inbox. Yeah. And we've started and stopped a couple times, but I also have a lot of inboxes and I bet other people out there too have more than one. And so then it just starts getting messy is you try and think between all of them.
Um mm-hmm. What was really helpful for me is to not care anymore and then to think it was fun to see how big that number got. I don't know if anybody's ever driven down the road and there's one of those signs that tells you're going too fast and if you really go too fast, it gives you the.
Red frowny face, and it turns out I love the red frowny face and I speed up for the sign. So this felt a little bit like what I did with my inbox, which I was like if I'm not gonna be able to keep up, let's go big a [00:04:00] self-destructive dopamine head. Actually, my son put this thing on my computer so it'll tell me how many tabs I have open, and it only goes up to two digits.
So when you go over 99 tabs open, it turns into a smiley face. So you have a happy tab guy, right? He's got job security. Exactly. What I have is I now get the dopamine hit from having unread emails instead of zero. So I did need to read the book. What do you tend to see? Like, one of the things that really kind of felt parallel for me was you know, like when your house is messy, it's kind of a reflection of the chaos that's going on with your identity. And I kind of feel like it's that way with the inbox as well. I mean, you having 74,012 inboxes, that's gotta make you feel kind of pulled in a bunch of different directions at times too. Right? Well I really related to when they said your email inbox is not your to-do list.
Like all of a sudden I was like, oh, I don't actually have to do all that stuff. I don't have to fix all of [00:05:00] it. And so that was useful. I also really like the idea, they really do emphasize things that you and I have talked about a lot, which is like time blocking. Mm-hmm. Don't constantly check your email box, like do a block, go through things.
And then they did have that system to have five categories and I like the five categories. Yeah. Delete. And I'll tell her what they are. Respond, defer, and do you use all of them? Yeah. I do not respond to all of them, but I do the delegate and I do the delete, and I like, star is my system for the respond.
So I'm doing at least three out of five all the time and I really find the, if you can do it in less than two minutes technique, really useful. So I try and do that even if two minutes turns into five. Mm-hmm. Just that, to get rid of those ones that I think are really important for me to do. 'Cause I love the idea, can I come back to bite you sometimes?
Because I think, like, as a physician, that's what I have found with my clients is that the two minute things will never stop. Like, [00:06:00] there's always a call, there's always a, like, can't you lose your whole day then? Or do you give it a hard stop? Yeah. I have a time block so I, you know, here's to do it. I get as far as I can in 30 minutes doesn't mean I get it all done.
Yeah. I also purposely don't answer right away, even if I can. Because I find a lot of things get done if I don't do them. Like, so all of a sudden my to-do list is a half or a third of what it was because other smart people who are on that email like figured it out or did it or talked to somebody else, and so mm-hmm.
I purposely don't do it right away. And for me the having it clean is also kind of like permission to breathe. There is so much. Parallel between an inbox system and a nervous system that it is just it. It brings me parallel joy to be like, yeah, that really does translate well. The other thing I liked is he said, don't create categories in your archive.
Just throw it in an archive and you like the [00:07:00] search engines are so good now that we can just search things. And I do search my email. So that was the other thing is like, don't use it like a filing system. Mm-hmm. I think a hundred percent. I've used mine like a filing system, but. The flip side of that is he said, throw everything in your archive.
Well, that's actually the filing system. It's just not all sitting in to do. So today. Honestly, for the first time as I read through things, I didn't have to do anything to follow up on. They were informational. I started throwing 'em an archive and I'm like, oh, this is nice. 'cause all of a sudden, like I was looking at 10 emails and five of them were gone in two minutes because I didn't need to do anything for them.
So not having to look through the email for the ones you do have to look at, even saves time by not having to scan. So that part was really useful. And and then there are tools out there that I think, and he didn't go as much into this in the book, but one of the ones he does mention is Boomerang which I love and use, and that's very popular with Gmail or if you have your domain through Gmail.
And I love that because if you reply to something, you can check a little box that says reply if I, put this back into my inbox if I haven't heard from [00:08:00] somebody in two days or in two weeks, or you could totally set the day or time so that. It is delegating it to your future self. Yeah, I mean, I think that's the stuff that AI will make easy.
I have a program called SaneBox, which instead of a VA is an AI who's helping me with my mailbox and you have to train it. And so every day I go in and say like, yeah, that one should have gone to this box or that box, but it has sane now, which is the stuff that goes right through saying later, which is the stuff, things I need to look at, but not, that's when I do my time block.
It has sane black holes, so it's stuff I should never see ever again. It has SANE newsletters, so I wanna look at all the newsletters in one place. Mm-hmm. it has sane receipts, so all the receipts go to one place. So that's actually been great as I train it appropriately, because there's a ton of newsletters that I wanna read every once in a while, but I don't want to, I don't wanna unsubscribe, but I don't want them filling my box, and it turns out it's a giant number.
And so I can go in every once in a while and be like, okay, I'm gonna get rid of everything but. Most of the time I'm like, oh, look at that. Look at that. Let's look at this. But only when I have time. So it doesn't take up [00:09:00] that like precious time. But I'm gonna tell you, when I did it, my inbox went from 350 emails in a day to 10.
And I'm like, I don't, what do I do at this time? You know, like I was, I went to the same later one and then I'm like, can maybe I look at the newsletters, like I didn't realize how little time I could spend and look at the important stuff and how much time I was wasting on just all of the chatter that was coming in my book.
And with my work with like narrative intelligence and the stories that we write ourselves, there are so many people who like associate their inbox with their identity. And so if they're behind, then they are a person who is always behind. If they are bad at responding, then they are a person who is thoughtless.
Like it's very easy to internalize unconsciously a lot of the stories about our relationship with our inbox and our relationship with people that we care about. And one of the things that. When you put yourself in the driver's seat and you're like, no I actually get to control this narrative.
I actually get to decide, what goes where. You get to choose which story, stay in your [00:10:00] ecosystem. So, and it's like archiving is kind of a micro act of releasing it to the universe of I am not becoming you. And so I just, I love that. Well, he also said multiple times, there's no moral virtue in answering your email the fastest and right.
I have absolutely had the time. I'm like, Ooh, I got through all my email so quick and I was like, oh, it turns out that's not actually a personality trait. Or on the flip side, I was reading another book, which hopefully we'll talk about down the road called Likable Badass, and one of the things she talked about was one of the ways to get more stature was to make sure you answer emails in a timely way so people felt like you valued.
Mm-hmm. The work they put into sending you something or the opinion they asked for. And it said you don't have to do everything but do the ones that appeal to you. And I was like, oh, well that one not helping my stature right now. I try and respond as well as I can, but getting an AI agent, having a virtual assistant help me having a team EML that goes to my team.
And so I have backup. Our way is to try and approach some of these things too, so you don't have to process all your email. And [00:11:00] in my work email, I actually work with an admin who asked me like, what can I do to help you? And she started. Putting like a red category on the ones that were most important had to be re replied to, and then I sorted my mailbox.
So those are the ones at the top. Mm-hmm. And it has been a game changer because now I'm like, great, I can look at the most important thing that I have to respond to. And if it's not something there, then most of it is probably something I could look at later. And the importance of AI comes back around too, with being honest and true to your authenticity and voice.
There are times when you don't have maybe the bandwidth. To write with like hugs and love and stars and rainbows, or whatever. And you can just, I mean, I don't know how many times when I used to work, in my W2 and there would, somebody would write me a snotty email and I would just be like, this mother, blah, blah, blah.
And I would just be like, make it professional, make it sound like I give a shit, let's go. And then like, and then it would write this oh, so nice to hear from you. And I was like, yeah, okay. That's what I can sound like when I'm not [00:12:00] letting my emotions drive the bus. So I had the best admin when I worked at Johns Hopkins and she.
A hundred percent. I would be like, this is ridiculous. It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Whatever I don't, you can, Dr. Mann has received your message. He's, you know, has thought through this and would love to have a conversation with you about it. And I was like, oh, thank you. Like such a better translator.
Like Stacey Whisperer. I was like, Tammy Wetzel, if you're out there, you're amazing. But the first time I realized, I was like, oh, thank God there's somebody who can translate my frustration into something productive. Yeah. But for those you out there, so who do you think to read this book? I think everyone should honestly read this book.
Yeah. I think if you get email, it is useful to read this book. If you don't get email, you do not have a can with a string. Yeah. If you don't get email, you're probably not. So, um, but I really, this book is great. I literally had a coaching conversation with somebody this week. I was just telling you. This, I used the concepts to [00:13:00] talk to him.
I'm mailing him the book, which is why I'm walking around with it. I do think it's really useful 'cause it's not just about email, it's about really how you focus your attention and you take back the energy that you're putting into the pudding as you like to say. Yes. Because I, I do think there's so much value in it, and there's some email shame out there, which I think I've had before the email euphoria of seeing that number go up more than your tabs.
And so I think everybody should read it. Who do you think should read it? I think anyone who is just kind of feeling like there's a disconnect between how they actually wanna be showing up in the world as organized, as grounded, as in control. Like it's just, it's an easy way. To get some quick wins, to give yourself some evidence that you are not a complete hot mess that is unsalvageable, and that you can be in your light and be contributing and be like, have all that just kind of just quick win evidence that it's [00:14:00] okay that it isn't it's not something that
people put a lot of energy into, and yet I think it really connects to a lot of people's like unconscious stories. I also think as though it's good for the people who are great at keeping their email empty, but maybe that's not where their energy should be spent. So that's why I actually was saying I think everybody should look at it.
'cause I think it can reframe for a lot of people. And it's 80 pages, 80 easy pages. Yeah. It's a good read. Not hard to read. Yeah. Yeah. And if you work in a team, you know, like literally make sure the whole team reads it because it gives you language where like, Stacey and I will be having the same conversations, but we're on the same page.
And it is very helpful because it's such a small book that if everyone is reading it, like I loved there, there's one little story in there. It talks about when you're spelling everyone's last name, inbox zero. The theory is let's say you had five people and you had to spell their names.
Inbox Zero says, Hey, spell one person at a time. And see how long that takes you versus just doing the first [00:15:00] letter, the second letter, the third letter, and how much longer that takes. And that's exactly what happens with your brain when you're task switching like that. Yeah. No, that, that's a beautiful way to say it too.
'cause we have read email and we know it's not all in one topic. Right. It's all over the place and your brain has to keep bouncing. Yep. Well, thank you for introducing me to inbox zero. I'm gonna keep working on my inbox. I will let our audience know about the ongoing saga of the $150,000 emails that I, any of which I'm never gonna read, but you have an anniversary episode of this, you'll be like, I'm down to 50,000.
That would be a huge win. Think about it, right? It would be. Well, thanks Stacey. Thank you all for joining us. If you enjoyed this, please subscribe. Thumbs up us, follow us, whatever format you're looking at this in. And please share it with people who you think might benefit because we would love to continue to be able to bring this to you.
So have a great day and [00:16:00] hopefully your inbox is closer to zero than mine. Go team.
