Why Batching Emails Works for Me
In my never ending quest to try and be the best version of myself, I’ve had some success in batching emails.
Do I do this all the time? No.
Have I fallen off the wagon? Yes.
When I do did it, it works well. Maybe this could be useful for you.
Why batch your emails?
When I looked at the emails I receive and there are many across multiple email addresses there isn’t that many important ones.
It’s very easy to check email multiple times a day, for little to no reward apart from wasting time and a dopamine hit.
Checking and replying all at once (batching) made better use of my time.
How to Batch Your Emails
Pick a time or times that work for you to sit down and do nothing but emails for a set period of time.
For me it is 10:00am and 6:00pm.
I usually take about 20 minutes each batching time to delete, unsubscribe or reply to emails.
My sole focus in that time is just to deal with the emails. It’s a frenzy of deleting the crap, unsubscribing from things I have no memory of subscribing to and replying to emails that are worthy.
Tips
I use Thunderbird as my desktop email client.
It feels better for me if I am at my desktop doing this.
Once I’ve opened it and the emails have downloaded, I go down to the bottom bar and disconnect Thunderbird from the internet.
This stops me getting distracted if anything new comes in.
I go through and sort everything out as needed and once done, I reconnect to the internet so it syncs back up. I then close it and try not to look at my email until the next batching time.
Oh and I have no notifications on for emails at all.
What About Important Emails?
There is almost nothing that is so important you need to receive it straight away, let alone reply to it as soon as you can.
Email has suffered the fate of instant messaging, people think they need to reply as soon as possible. I’ll argue that isn’t true.
Having the 2 batching periods still gives me plenty of time to reply to an email if needed. Without stressing myself out.
Sometimes I might read the email in one batch, and reply in the next, giving my brain time to digest it and reply the best I can.
If it's really important people will ring you.
So there we go, my batching email process.