Email Bombardment Creating Boundaries to Contain the Insanity.

• Author: Blitz, Adam
• Position: TechTalk

My email inbox is a disaster! I exit an hour-long meeting to return to my desk and see that rather than do the tasks I had planned on completing today, I now have 10 emails to respond to. T leave the office and I'm constantly responding to emails from my phone. I go on vacation and despite my email out of the office notification, the emails continue to flow in. Does this sound like you? Is this what your practice looks like? You're not alone.

Over the last several years I've made every intention to become more connected and accessible. Yet, you get to a point where it seems as if what is most important is to be just as accessible as you need to be. The best and most effective way to manage my email overload is through the use of personal boundaries. But if you struggle to adhere to those boundaries, here are some tools and tricks to help. I'm going to go from easy-to-implemenl to how-can-you-even-consider-that options. Feel free to reach out with your email management tips!

Employ a (New) Email Management System You may use Oudook and organize your emails into folders; you might use Gmail and push your emails into different colored buckets. Those might be the two most popular email management tools out there, but I would argue there are third-party applications to help prioritize when emails need a response. Because, despite wanting to respond to every email immediately, at some point, you need to focus on the emails that have the most importance.

I use an app called Karbon (karbonhq.com) which helps me route emails to projects and other team members with ease. It's the best feeling when I see a team member take care of my project and a client.

If you search for email management tools online you will find 100 different apps that might do one task. Find the issues that are most important to you and apply specific tools that address what you need. Don't expect there to be one app that will work perfectly for you as the apps were not made specifically for you.

Turn Off All Notifications As I sit at my computer and receive email notifications, I'm concurrently getting the same notifications on my phone and my Apple watch. It's draining! Utilizing the "focus" mode on my phone and watch is golden. In the "work focus" mode, personally, I allow for no one to be able to get through to me. But that can be customized for your needs. If I want to do my best work, I need as few distractions as possible so I block out time and won't review my email or...