Hi, my name is Jennifer and I’ve been email free for 2 years.

Yes, it’s true. You read it correctly, email free! And wowza does it feel good!

We all have an abundance of email, some necessary, some not so much. Over the years I’ve struggled with how to best manage what has seem to become an ever growing disease. I’ve been to classes, I’ve read blogs, I’ve asked others, I’ve ignored it, planned for it, and organized it. It seemed to me that no matter how much time I set aside, an hour every day, or 4 hours on Saturdays, I couldn’t cure the ailment.

Working for an engineering company, I was reminded to ask myself a simple question:

“What was the problem I was trying to solve?”

The challenge

I work for a very large corporation, however, there are very few people responsible for the global management of the brand. Therefore, I tend to be the go-to woman for all things brand. At first, I was trying to solve the problem of read and respond to all the emails. It wasn’t anyone else’s fault that we were a small team, they had needs, and we had answers. Upon further reflection about my job responsibilities and what people seemed to need and want from me, the problem turned out to be time.

Not unlike many challenges we face in both our personal and professional lives, time is ever elusive. The good news and the bad news happen to be the same – there’s not going to be any more of it. 24 hours in a day, that’s it. 7 days in a week, no more. Which, looking at it from the bright side, means you have to work out where that time needs to get used without answering “all of it”.

An idea

I decided to try an experiment, covert the emails to time, and not just my time but the emailers time…and I started with my group of internal attorneys. Due to my role in the company, there were many situations they needed to review with me and secure my approval on. In general, they would send a 5 page dissertation via email and ask for my response in writing. Most of the time the legal jargon was so intense that comprehending the gist of the situation would take me much longer than just your average scan.

The situations really needed a phone call for me to understand what approvals were being requested. The company uses Outlook and therefore my calendar could be viewed by anyone in the company. I asked my attorneys to schedule some time with me for each situation rather than sending an email. I told them they should be the judge on how much time they needed and I would make it available, whether it was 5 minutes or 3 hours.

The first response that I got back was “Well, your calendar is booked from 7am until 7pm for the next three weeks.” Precisely……this was the issue all along. If I was in back-to-back meetings and project work, when would there really ever be time to review and respond to email? Even if I blocked a couple of hours a day for email since you really never know what’s in there, you don’t know how much time is necessary. So, I explained to my attorneys, just block the first available slot and I promise I’ll keep it held for you.

The results

They were fast learners! And we even improved the process, they would schedule 15 minutes for a quick phone call. They would apprise me of a situation, we could discuss any questions I might have on it and I could make a decision right there on the spot. In the past, they may have emails sitting in my inbox for days or even weeks that I could never get to. It wasn’t that they were unimportant, but when everything is urgent and everything is important, something gets to sit the inbox black hole. And, in the case of needing an approval in writing, they would send me a brief email while we were on the phone and in that same call I could send back a simple “approved”. In some cases where I actually did need to read a brief, my attorneys got so good, they would send a calendar invite and say “just block 30 minutes to read this doc, then we’ll send another calendar invite later to discuss”. Brilliant – I was actually putting time in the calendar for reading and reviewing.

Word spread like wildfire that the best way to discuss things with me was to actually DISCUSS them. Most items only need a 15 minute call. I starting running my work load by my calendar. I would block time for project work and the rest of it was available for talking to people in person or, since i was in a global role, over the phone. I found I built relationships, got a better understanding of the needs and wants of my internal customer base and was two to three times more productive than ever.

People ask me about external parties, those that can’t see my inbox. I tell them the same, just send me a meeting request. If I’m booked at the time you requested, I’ll reply back with a couple of options that might work best for them.

The reality

This may not be the answer for everyone, but I found that people were abusing the idea behind email. They were filling my inbox with things that had no relevance to me, but would take my time to figure out they weren’t relevant or necessary. Some were just tossing their problem over to my yard without any agreement I would take it on. People were writing thesis papers rather than just having a conversation. And then there’s tone, how much trouble do we all get into because we assume tonality in an email that was never intended? A real human conversation, even over the phone, really helps keep the assumptions to a minimum. My biggest challenge early on is that I forgot to schedule bathroom breaks! I was back-to-back every day trying to have the most availability on my calendar. (No worries, I got that one sorted out pretty quickly.)

To be honest, I still have email. I just use it for “document exchange”. Most of my department uses What’sApp and Text messaging for quick heads up notices and FYIs. I talk to people and see people much more often, even if they are on the other side of the planet. Let’s face it, global roles in big corporations require some odd and extended business hours, but if you can get more productivity out of that time, it can sure make you feel like your time wasn’t wasted and you helped some people along the way.

If you planned to start the New Year with a clean Inbox, give the calendar option a try and see if you can’t keep it that way all year long!

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