17 Slaying The Email Dragon

Email shouldn’t feel like a fire alarm you can’t silence. On this episode, we will dive into a clear, repeatable system that turns chaos into a calm so you can focus on the work that actually moves the needle. Instead of “checking” mail all day, we will walk through how to process it in scheduled sessions and make one-touch decisions that delete, do, defer, delegate, or file every message with confidence.

We will share a real-world setup for inbox triage that keeps important items at the top.  For those without staff, we will explore AI tools like SaneBox (sanebox.com) that learn your patterns and route low-value messages out of your way while prioritizing what matters. You’ll hear how to define meeting criteria, write clear delegation notes with deadlines and authority, and create standard responses that reduce back-and-forth without losing your voice.

By the end, you’ll have a simple playbook to schedule email, route messages to the correct homes, and reclaim your calendar from constant context switching. The payoff is immediate. Subscribe, share this with someone drowning in their inbox, and leave a quick review to tell us which step you’ll implement first.

Buy Back Your Time - https://www.buybackyourtime.com/

Blinn Bates - BlinnBates.com

Woods & Bates, P.C. - WoodsandBates.com

Right Fit Evaluator: https://blinnbates.com/right-fit-evaluator

Transcript

From Checking To Processing

The Five-Outcome Decision Flow

Delegating Inbox Triage

Simplifying Folders And Search

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Welcome back. Email isn't just a tool anymore for most professionals. Email is a dragon attacking their calendar. Today I want to talk a little bit about a way to slay the email dragon using some systems and not just relying strictly on our own self-discipline to do that. So we've talked about this problem in the past. Email, in and of itself, has accelerated business faster than almost any innovation in our careers, but it's also created some constant interruptions, reactive work days, never-ending to-do lists created by other people. Most professionals aren't managing their email well. They're just trying to survive it. And we talked in prior episodes about a mindset shift from checking it to processing it. So we want to stop checking it constantly. We don't want to be looking at it all the time, getting the dings. And we want to start processing it and coming up with a system to be able to do that. So whether that's a scheduled time or times, and then have a workflow that we work through every time we process that email so that everything has a clear destination. We don't want to use our inbox as storage. We want the decisions that we make in the inbox to move things forward. So the book by Dan Martell, Buy Back Your Time, gives us a framework for this. And we've talked about some of this before. When we're processing our email, and however we've decided to do that, if we're setting time in the morning, time in the afternoon, however that is going to be done, when we're looking at those, every email should get one of five outcomes. Okay. It should be deleted. If it doesn't matter, we're just going to get rid of it. It should be done if it meets the two-minute rule we've talked about. If it's going to take under two minutes, let's just do it while we're processing it. Could be deferred if it needs some deeper thought. Uh, if it needs some more additional work, we're going to put that on a task list, or we're even better going to calendar some time to do that in the immediate future. Could be delegated. So we're going to forward that on to someone with clear instructions on here's what I need you to do, here's your level level of authority, please report back. Here's the deadline, etc. We're going to file it for reference. Maybe we have folders, things that we want to file it in. So we're only going to touch each email once. We're going to make a decision and we're going to move on. If we're rereading the same email three times, over and over every time we're processing our email, our system's broken. We only want to touch these emails one time. Now, that's a system for processing it, but what if I told you that somebody else should be filtering your emails before you even lay eyes on them? Layer two of this in the book talks about what Dan calls his email GPS system. And this is a structure for routing emails and prioritizing the emails that you see and to create an infrastructure to make this sustainable and give you more time back. So what we're going to do is we're going to delegate the sorting of the inbox to someone like an executive assistant. And we're going to give them access to the email in some way, shape, or form. The way that I do this is through a shared email inbox. And then we're going to create rules. And he has a system in here that he's come up with. What he says is we're going to create some folders. So he has seven folders that he wants you to create. And these are going to be created such that they're going to reside at the top of your email inbox. So I use Outlook. So if you put an exclamation mark and your name in the folder, that's going to be at the very top. Those are going to be reserved for messages that you need to deal with. You need to see, you need to deal with. So that executive assistant's going to run those into that when they come in. Then he's got files for needed to be responded to, review. Here's ones that I've responded to, or waiting on something for this. These are receipts or financial reports, maybe some newsletters if you've subscribed to things like that. Now I started with this and I've really paired this down for me. I paired this down to about three files. So one of them is for me, one of them is receipts, and one of them is need to review with others. And that works for me pretty well because I don't have a lot of things that don't meet one of those criteria. Now, one of the tricks to this that I have found is I also have a folder that's called clean because if it's just deleted, it doesn't show up in a search. So Outlook's search function is not great, but if it goes into that folder, at least it's still there and can be searched if need be. So the purpose of this gives every email a destination. You don't have messages floating out there and there's not mental clutter. You know, you're not thinking about that thing that's in your inbox every time you're opening your email to process it. Now, I get some pushback on this. I don't have anyone on my staff that could do this. I don't have staff, it's just me. There are tools now, AI tools, that allow us to have this done for us. One of the ones that I've seen, I have not used this. One of the ones that people have told me about is called Sane Box. I'll put that link in the show notes. But what it does is it moves these messages for you, just as I've described. So rather than having an executive assistant do this, this Sane Box learns your system and moves these things for you. Now, whether it's a person, whether it's this product, it's going to take some training. But I think with some training and with some effort, it's going to be able to move these things automatically or under a set of rules, filter the high priority things and filter out the low priority, and ensure that what you're looking at actually matters and give you a firewall to your attention. Okay. So we're going to need to train. Here's how these things should be responded to, if you can respond to them. You know, if I get a request for meeting, here's the criteria of meetings that I'm willing to take. And here's the criteria of how we should be responding to these things. Here's how we need to route these messages. So you're going to maintain control, but you're going to remove yourself from the unnecessary processing. Again, this is going to take some time. It's going to take some training. It's going to take some patience. These products or these people need to know how they're supposed to respond, how they're supposed to do these things. And over time, this gets better and better. You can hone it, you can make it better, you can make it suit your needs just like I've done. And one of the biggest protectors of your attention is going to be when you can turn off that email notification. Just turn that off. If it's not dinging, it's not going to be allowed to interrupt you. And then it's going to be something that you visit intentionally and not something that attacks your focus. So we're going to schedule our email processing once or twice a day. We're going to have that decision method ready when we do process it. And then we're going to use this GPS system so that we're looking at things that we know need our attention. Or we're going to use some automation tools that are available to us relatively inexpensive now. This is going to reduce our notifications. It's going to result in fewer interruptions, faster decisions, less anxiety, more time for deep work, and we're going to reclaim more of our time so that we're not just firefighting in our email inbox all the time. It's going to become predictable, organized, and contained. So this week, stop checking your email. Pick two times per day, process it, create these folders, use this method that we've discussed and delegate this to someone else or some technology. You're not going to beat your email with willpower, but you can beat it with structure. This system is how we're going to take control of our inbox and protect our focus. That's how we're going to maximize our time and elevate our life.