#im a senior at my workplace now with an impressive resume

[peachyist]

god dropping out of university was the best idea of my life

[exitrowiron]

I always appreciate your posts and pieces of advice. I’m curious if you have any good recommendations/best practices for managing work email?

I was recently reminded of the advice, "You teach people how to treat you." I think this advice applies to the workplace and especially email.

First, a bit of history. When the Blackberry first came out it was a novelty and being able to instantly reply to email anywhere/anytime was cool and impressive but it quickly led to the habit of checking email everywhere/all the time. Our kids were little and it isn't possible to be a good Dad or husband and be constantly fixated on email so I made the intentional decision to place my Blackberry (and later my iPhone) in the basket by the door where I also place my wallet and keys whenever I came home. That simple decision quickly became a habit and firmly established my policy that email stops at the end of my workday and doesn't resume until my workday starts.

To help reinforce my habit, I turned off all email notifications (vibrations, sounds, badges, pop-ups etc.) on my phone and computer. I still cringe when I happen to see someone else's phone with a huge number of unread emails as a badge on top of their email icon.

I usually spent the first 1-2 hours in the office clearing email from the previous day and emails sent from global colleagues over night. Then calls and meetings would generally consume my attention until 3pm at which point I'd do email until I left for the day. In between I'd be responding to IMs and texts and clearing easy emails but trying not to multi-task while on calls.

My colleagues pretty quickly figured out the most appropriate way to communicate with me. I generally responded to emails within a few business hours. If the question was simple/quick then they would ask via Instant Message. If the matter was urgent or required my attention outside of work hours; call or text my cell. Importantly, I used the same methods and had the same response expectations of everyone else: superiors, peers and subordinates.

It is best to establish your boundaries and set expectations as early in the employment relationship as possible. If you're interviewing for a job, email expectations and culture should definitely by one of your questions. When you meet your new manager, explain your policies.

As a manager I explicitly communicated my expectations and boundaries and made it clear that I wasn't going to be impressed by emails (even responses to my own emails) sent outside of work hours. As a senior executive I know that employees paid attention to my email behavior and that my actions influenced the company culture.

I had 2-300 personal folders but deleted everything else (including sent mail) after six months. Over holiday breaks I would try to clean out my inbox and get it down to a reasonable level.

Even though I think I had good email 'hygiene' I still found email to be psychologically crushing, a Sisyphean task that was never done. If not for the overwhelming number of daily emails, I might have considered working longer as I enjoyed the other aspects of my job. Now I take great pleasure in maintaining a personal Gmail account with no unread emails and every day I unsubscribe to whatever new spam has found me.