The Tyranny of the Inbox

You're listening to the upper case life, where we look for joy in the little things. And I'm your host, Joseph Brewster. 
Recently, I was talking with young men about his daily routine and his work schedule. And he said something that stood out to me that I thought was very relatable for a lot of people. He said, I live by my inbox, which I thought was a very honest and interesting statement.
He went on to talk about the fact that his daily to do list, his calendar, pretty much everything about the actions that he takes on a daily basis relate to the emails that he receives. And I could relate a lot to this because I've struggled at various times in my professional career with living according to my inbox. And for our purposes, today, I'm going to categorize the inbox as an extrinsic motivating force.
It's just one of many kinds that you could have. Maybe you work a retail job. In that case, you're probably not motivated by your inbox. You're probably motivated by your supervisor or your manager. But there's some sort of external force to which you are looking Asking, What should I be doing with my time, with my day? And for some of us who run our own businesses, who are entrepreneurs or freelancers that inbox is kind of like our supervisor.
And we start looking at those incoming messages as dictators over our daily schedule. Now, I would encourage you not to do that. And as he was saying this, I think that he was acknowledging he knew that this was not really the way he wanted his day to function. But that he was aware of the fact that the inbox pretty much dictated his to do list and his schedule.
So how can we stop our inbox from becoming a tyrant that just rules our day and takes over our to do list? Well, here are a few things that I've implemented through the years that have really helped me tame the control that the inbox has over my daily life. One of the first things in the biggest thing is just enter it intentionally.
I think sometimes one of the reasons the inbox controls our day is because we give it unlimited access to our attention. So we are constantly in the inbox. Maybe you have it up in a tab and you're looking at it all the time. And so when you get to a point where you're done with a task or you start and you're wondering, what should I do next?
You just automatically check the inbox, but maybe you should be entering that inbox intentionally, making sure you do it at a time that you can really pay attention. And then when you're in the inbox looking at messages now you can process that and put those that information into the right categories and plan your day accordingly. And then leave the inbox.
You're going to have to leave the inbox at some time during the day. You can't live in the inbox. It will distract you all day long. So make sure you enter your inbox intentionally. And here's something that I do viciously. I archive and I delete emails like crazy. I have not had more than one page of emails for a good, solid eight years.
And I work really hard to make sure that my inbox is clean so that when I open it up in the morning, I'm not seeing a thousand messages. And when I do see them, I make sure that I do the right thing with them, that I don't just let them sit I would consider this kind of the equivalent of just cleaning your room, getting the laundry off the floor so that mentally when you show up in that inbox, it doesn't stress you out.
Like, Oh my gosh. Because if you look at that little number, how many emails are there in your inbox? If that thing is up in the hundreds and possibly thousands, which it was for me at one point in my life, That number itself is just anxiety inducing, like, oh, my God. Well, I am constantly archiving conversations that I've already replied to so that they leave my inbox and I won't see them again until that person replies.
And then I'm deleting other things that I just don't need. I don't need them to ever come back. Why would I? So archive and delete. And then here's one filter your inbox depending on the inbox you're using. But I really think pretty much every inbox software has an ability to do this. You can filter where emails go when they come into your email.
So in other words, in Google, if you're using Google business suites or even the free versions, I believe you can create tabs at the top so that you can route all incoming social media automated emails or updates from companies whose mailing lists run. They go into different tabs and they don't come into your primary top importance inbox. Tab.
And I've done that for years. That is great because if you've signed up for anything, you're going to get all these newsletters, and I don't need those to be in the same priority list inbox as client information. So I keep them separate. But also you can filter out particular email addresses. You can block particular addresses, use filters to your advantage when you notice time wastes inside of your inbox.
Ask yourself, Could I build a filter in here to make sure that all the emails from these people go over to one section and then I can just click on that folder and find all of their emails. What can you do to filter and improve the experience of being in your inbox? And then here's the last thing is protect your focus.
And I was talking about having it up in another tab earlier. But for me, here's something that I did a long, long time ago, is I have turned all notifications off for my inbox. And depending on what industry you're in, you might be like, That's crazy. I can't do that. But let me ask you something. Should your email constantly have access to you?
I mean, is that really what email as a transmission method is meant to be? My opinion is no. And I know that this might be controversial. Different people have different opinions but so my email notifications have been off on my phone for years. The only time I will see an email if I am not sitting at my computer is I will have to open that app intentionally and go in there, look at it because I got things that I'm doing.
And even if I'm not going to stop and I'm not going to address the email right, then if I see that email come in, even if I just see the subject line of that email, it'll be in my head, right? Like I might not stop and open it and reply right then, but it just pulled my focus away from whatever the other thing was I'm doing.
And you've probably had that experience where you're like, Oh no, but it's not the moment where you can respond to it, but you already saw and you can't unsee it. So make sure that you protect your focus by not looking at things when you don't need to. And then might come back again to just making sure that you're entering that inbox intentionally.
Because here's the thing, the inbox is a tool for you. It's it's not your boss. You shouldn't be looking at that inbox to tell you what you should be doing with your day. You should be planning your day, and then you should look in your inbox and then take the information in your inbox and see how you can apply that in your day.
But the truth is, there's probably going to be a lot of instances where someone's going to send you something in your inbox and you're going to have to tell them. I can do that, but not today because I already have plans for today. Here's the truth. If you don't plan your time somebody else is going to somebody else will, and it'll probably come from your inbox if you're anything like me.
So be careful and protect your focus. Don't let your inbox rule you. Your inbox is an awesome tool and a great form of communication, but it can also be really stressful if you don't manage it well. So what sort of techniques do you use to manage your inbox? Any tools, any ideas, any cool apps that you use for making sure that you're employing your emails as efficiently as possible?
I'd love to hear your comments, your feedback. You can email me at theupperca...