Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign hi there and welcome back to the Confessions from the Home Office podcast. I'm Wendy Hill and each week I talk about business, marketing, entrepreneurship, and all the stories that come with working from your home office or maybe your kitchen table or maybe a corner of the den, or if you're like me, occasionally from your car because it's the only quiet place left when your husband's parakeets won't stop screaming or when you're on a conference call.
[00:00:33] So I have a confession today, and it is My email inbox is a dumpster fire.
[00:00:40] Yeah, I said it. I know. I always try to sound like I have things buttoned up and things figured out, and for the most part I do. But my email inbox makes anybody with OCD cringe.
[00:00:52] So if you're nodding along right now, this episode is for you.
[00:00:57] Whether you're drowning in unread messages, you're ghosting people by accident because you just have too much in there, or you're getting passive aggressive follow up emails from people. We're going to talk about email tales for the chronically overwhelmed with a little bit of humor because sometimes all you can do is laugh and then go and archive 500 messages.
[00:01:18] So how did we get here?
[00:01:20] Let's kind of rewind things and go back. Remember when email felt exciting a long time ago, or you got a new email account for your business or you change jobs or you've been around longer like me, and email was a new thing and you got a notification and thought, oh, someone wants to talk to me or someone sent something to me and now you hear that ding or that notification, you think, well, like, I know I'm grateful for my clients, my business, everybody in my life. But I keep thinking, what's getting ready to happen sometimes when it's been one of those days.
[00:01:52] So somehow I, I end up with, you know, things. Three Gmail tabs open at all times, partially because I have multiple email addresses and I have to go into clients emails and do things for them off and on. And I'm one of those inboxes that doesn't stay cleaned out and I'll keep pitches from people or introductory sales emails or a newsletter that I think I'm going to read later. And things pile up and I end up with clients that send emails sometimes that are meant for somebody else and I kind of have to decipher it and figure out is this supposed to go to someone else or am I missing something? All kinds of fun things happen.
[00:02:33] So I used to believe that inbox zero with nothing in. It was a myth like unicorns or children that behave. But it turns out it can happen.
[00:02:44] But it's not sustainable unless you have a full time assistant or no friends or hobbies. That's my opinion. But.
[00:02:51] But if you need something that you emailed to me four years ago, I have it. So no worries.
[00:02:58] So the biggest email sends that I've committed. I do have a couple of confessions here.
[00:03:03] Number one is responding in my head and not actually replying. I'll read an email maybe on my phone, maybe it's after hours and I think, oh, as soon as I finish, you know, helping my husband with dinner, or as soon as I let the dogs out, I'll reply back. The, the reply kind of goes through my head.
[00:03:24] Turns out I either drafted it mentally or I wrote it and saved it as drafts because I was busy and I want to go back and proof it. Oops, that happens sometimes. So now I've started starring emails I need to respond to and make sure they don't slip through the cracks.
[00:03:39] Confession number two is forgetting attachments.
[00:03:42] I'll send emails attached. You will see this or please see attached and then I'll get back. I didn't see the attachment. Okay. Sometimes my brain works faster than it's supposed to, so I've learned to slow down and breathe a little. So now this doesn't happen as often.
[00:03:57] Confession number three is short replies when I'm exhausted.
[00:04:01] So by Thursday of each week I've been cranking it out and I'll admit I'm getting tired and, and if I sent a short reply and then even get a shorter response back from someone, I think, ooh, okay, I probably should have watched the tone. It's not anything rude, but normally I write emails that are a little more happy, upbeat.
[00:04:26] I'm not super short with emails and so now I'll make sure I'm not wiped out when I respond. And I try to reread everything for tone and any other perception somebody may have. I know I can't make everybody happy, but I try to keep things pretty smooth.
[00:04:42] And confession number four, I used to let my email inbox dictate my day.
[00:04:49] So I feel like if you check your email inbox first thing in the morning or right when you get up, you've just kind of handed the power over to the rest of the universe. You're going to be writing back, you're going to keep checking. And it's taken me a long time, but I make sure that I get a few things handled for myself and for clients before I dig into emails. So if it's something I was working on the day before and didn't wrap up, I wrap that up. If there's a few things I need to publish, I do that.
[00:05:18] That doesn't mean that people don't hear back from me until noon, but it's just a mental thing. I need to get a couple things done so I don't immediately wake up with that whole, you know, overwhelmed and how am I going to get everything done? And I'm already overwhelmed and at 7:30 in the morning.
[00:05:34] So here are a couple more useful tips that help me most of the time.
[00:05:38] So now that I've aired that I have a dumpster fire for an email inbox, let's talk about what really helps.
[00:05:47] I have started, like I was mentioning a minute ago, I don't stay in my email all day long. I try to respond back around 9, 9:30 in the morning and then again after 2. That seems to be kind of the flow right now with my clients. That may change at some point.
[00:06:04] The rest of the time I try to work and try to keep my email closed if I can. The good thing is, is I don't have any clients that are emailing over and over again. I've had that before and I have a good relationship with all my clients and they know they can text me if there's something that's a major emergency where they need to talk to me and I'll get right back to them.
[00:06:27] Number two is using email templates. Gmail has a feature called Templates and is fantastic. So if you feel like you're writing the same type of emails over and over, save some templates and then you can go in and edit the templates and send it. You don't have to send exactly what you created, but it'll give you a start and save you a little bit of time.
[00:06:46] Number three is I'm learning how to archive aggressively.
[00:06:51] My inbox is I don't even want to tell you how many are in there.
[00:06:55] It's more than more than you would even guess.
[00:06:58] So once I read it, handle it, or if it's not urgent, I go ahead and archive it. I am working on creating more and more folders each week for for different topics and somehow my phone just went off. I don't know, some news conference just came on. That's really strange.
[00:07:19] I'm creating more folders each week and trying to get things out of my inbox and try to keep things fil and it really is a priority and I'm making progress.
[00:07:28] And subject lines, this is the next one. Subject lines matter.
[00:07:34] I would say this for anybody who's sending emails for either yourself sending stuff out to clients, vendors, and if you're sending email to your marketing person or a vendor, try to be a little more descript in your subject.
[00:07:51] I get a lot of quick question or checking in really, what does that mean? But maybe like follow up social media planning for August or outline attached for next podcast episodes.
[00:08:03] That way it's easier for somebody to find it and it's clear. And sometimes being super short in your your subject line doesn't help it to be opened or it's kind of hard for somebody to find it later.
[00:08:18] So the last one is when in doubt, don't reply when you're annoyed. We all get annoyed just because we're tired or we had a bad day or something's been miscommunicated or somebody on the other end is having a bad day.
[00:08:31] So when in doubt, save it as a draft, write it in Google Docs, write it in a note, walk away, come back and I know sometimes I feel like I need to tone it down a little bit or have someone else read it and you'll thank yourself later. It just eliminates the drama.
[00:08:48] So think about it.
[00:08:50] Email really is an enemy. It's just overused, it gets mismanaged and sometimes I feel like people curse it.
[00:08:58] But if we all slow down a little bit, maybe set a little boundaries, don't let the email manage us, and try to sit down and write a thoughtful reply instead of just a chatgpt result, we would spend less time drowning in digital piles of all the unread junk email.
[00:09:18] So here's a few things you can do. It may sound like I was preaching today and that was not my intent. It was just more trying to share.
[00:09:26] But if you're sitting around, clean out 10 emails right now. And if you did that very quickly, clean out 10 more.
[00:09:33] Also, go in and search for the word unsubscribe in your inbox. It'll show you all the email newsletters that you receive from people and from companies. And if you're not reading them anymore, just unsubscribe. I do this when I'm on hold or if I'm waiting at a doctor's appointment or something like that. That's a great thing, great way to save, save time and, and just take care of it and also just give yourself a little grace.
[00:10:02] We're all trying to stay afloat. We get so much from everybody and email's still important, but just know that you're not going to fix it right away if your inbox is crazy. It just takes a little bit at a time.
[00:10:18] And for those people who get down to zero in their inbox, and I'm married to one of those people, you have fun with that.
[00:10:25] So if you like this episode, send it on to someone else who might be a little overwhelmed with their inbox. Or they just have a lot going on or you could afford it with the subject line.
[00:10:36] This episode made me feel slightly attacked. That might get their attention.
[00:10:43] So don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and rate, follow the podcast that helps for it to be found by others and I would really appreciate it. And one other quick announcement. So when I got started out 20 years ago, I was doing mainly marketing virtual assistant work.
[00:11:03] I now have a free marketing VA group on Facebook where people can come over and get questions answered. There's some training on there, some helpful hints, some links to podcast that would help and so check that out. I'll put the link in the show notes and over there I won't. I won't spam your inbox, but I will answer your questions.
[00:11:25] So until next time, check your spam folder and delete a lot of those and I'll see you next week.
