Three Tips to Help Nonprofit Directors Break Free From Email

Are you chained to your desk responding to never ending emails?
This episodes provides three tips to manage your email and gain control of your time.
We explore how to:
1. Master the urge to check your emails
2.Effectively triage your inbox
3. Set clear boundaries to respond to emails
These smart systems help you regain control of your time and energy so you lead your agency with confidence.

Find more practicable tips on my website Relish Your Role. com. I have so much respect for the work you do!
Thanks for listening.

Transcript

How much of your day as Nonprofit Executive Director is spent responding to emails?

Do you feel as if you are chained to your desk trying to clear out your inbox?

It is a dangerous trap- you end up reacting to the agendas of others and responding to their requests leaving you without the time or mental energy to move your own list of priorities forward.

Why do we allow ourselves to be shackled to our email inbox?

Let’s explore why you get sucked into the email trap and habits you can learn so you can break free and regain time and energy to pursue your own agenda.

You can hear the full episode at relishyourrole.com/17

Your Email is a Venus Fly-Tap

You know how this goes; you get to work with a clear sense of what you want to accomplish that day.

You fire up your computer, grab your coffee, and there is a string of emails awaiting you.

As you work your way through them, you find for some of them you need to do some research before you can respond.  Others make you realize you have not kept track of a previous correspondence and you have to search for it.  A third alerts you that there is a conflict brewing among one of your partners and will require a thoughtful and nuanced response.

And all of this happens before nine in the morning and before you know it your morning is shot just working through your emails.

What was once a useful communication tool has become a tyrant controlling your time and mental energy.

What is most destructive is you lose control of your focus and you are placed in a reactive mode.

So let’s talk about ways you can control your inbox and reclaim your day.  

Three Habits to Break Free from Your Email

There are three habits you can adapt to free you from the tyranny of email.

1.    Master the urge to continue check your inbox

2.    Triage your inbox

3.    Set clear time boundaries for responding to email

Controlling your Urge to Continually Check Your Inbox

According to the McKinsey Global Institute we receive 122 emails every day at work and check our inbox 72 times a day.  

72 times a day?!?

 That is a ton of time and there is no reason to think the volume will decrease.

So, we know you are bombarded throughout the day with the requests and needs of others.

Wiser minds than my own understand what it is about our inbox makes us anxious, but I think we would all would agree that not knowing what has been sent to us makes us anxious. 

So, we are continually checking and refreshing our browser to see what emails we have received.

You know the pattern, you are writing a grant report, you finish a paragraph, and you switch back to your inbox and get distracted by reading your new emails.  We cannot seem to be able to complete a task without little breaks to check our inboxes.

Those of you wearing apple watches or have notifications on your phone alert you when you receive new emails have auditory lures bringing you back to your inbox.  Your computer setting may give you a visual alert when a new email arrives.

So coupled with our internal anxiety, we have surrounded ourselves with visual and auditory cues to distract us and lead us back to our email screen.

One way to control your email is to limit the time you check it.

That is hard to do if you are surrounded by reminders of inbox activity.

An impactful first step one is to turn those notifications off and allow you to consciously control when you check your email.

I advise my clients to set a clear time for them to check their email two or three times a day.  I touched on this in episode 2 and episode 8 .  If you are checking  your email the first thing in the morning, once mid-day and once mid-afternoon you can stay current without being chained to your screen.

That may seem too extreme so allow yourself to work up to checking your inbox just three times a day  by limiting the time you check your email to once an hour and ty to cut down from there.  I promise you there is nothing there that demands your ongoing constant attention, and you will not miss anything by just checking in hourly.

Triage your Inbox

Once you are not continually checking your inbox you can bring a clear eye to what is waiting for you.  Not everything is a top priority.

By separating out our email by their quality you begin to regain control.

You need to categorize your emails so the volume of what you have to respond to grows smaller.

Here are some easy ways to do focus only on the important emails:

1.    Newsletters, Email blasts, Press Releases

These informational emails do not need an immediate read.  Create labels in your inbox for newsletters and such and move them from your inbox into a separate folder.  This accomplishes two things:  

Visually moving some emails out of your inbox, giving you less to respond to, and It creates a separate resource file where you can turn to those things at your leisure.

2. Emails which you are copied on

If you are copied on an email, it is usually to inform you rather than requiring a response.  These emails do not need your immediate attention.  Most email programs allow you to mark your emails and you can identify those CC emails and again read them when you have time.  

You may be copied on an email that involves one of your staff.  If you respond or insert yourself into the conversation, you may be undercutting your staff.  Most of the time it is better for a host of reasons to talk with your staff if you have a concern about something in that email rather than respond in writing.  

Read those emails where you have been copied carefully, if you are not asked explicitly to respond, do not do so. 

Staying quiet when you are copied on an email is a way to support your staff.  Curtail your desire to chime in, there are many good reasons to hang back.

It is also good practice to forward emails to staff who could more knowledgably respond.  You know if it is important that the response comes from you but often, these requests provide an opportunity for your staff to shine and share their expertise- an action you should support.

It is tempting to always want to be the one who replies but think this through in terms of your time and desire to develop leadership within your agency.

By thoughtfully forwarding emails to others within your agency you are promoting the skills of your staff as well and thinning out your inbox.

Lastly be honest with yourself, you get emails which can be easily scanned and deleted.  Get rid of those things which do not have value and move on, you have other things to do.

Set Clear Boundaries 

I talked about the importance of not continually checking your emails throughout the day.  Turning off your notifications will help you curb the reflexive tendency to check your inbox.

But you do have things which require your thoughtful response.

If you can set aside time to read and thoughtfully respond to your emails you will gain a few hours of your workday.  

High performing executive directors I work with calendar in their email response time.  They consciously set aside 30-minute time slots throughout their day to catch up on correspondence.

It is actually blocked off in their calendar.  It is undisturbed time that they can bring their thoughtful selves to responding.

Notice how different that sounds and feels?

What would it be like if you could actually schedule your time to respond to emails rather than feeling like you have to immediately respond and having your time eaten away?

Just imagine- having control of your time and setting boundaries so you can work intentionally and efficiently.  

If this sounds think something that you want to achieve, get in touch at relishyourrole.com to learn about our signature system that helps you gain control of your time and strengthen your work relationships so you can lead with confidence in your authentic voice.

I know I can help you get there.