Right upfront: this is my recipe:

I check my emails only once per day.

Click to jump directly to the recipe Photo credit: Barreras inagurales

Before you think

“I know I should do that. Is that all he has to say?”

I have to ask you: are you doing it? And: do you think you can improve on your email habit?

It has changed my life (I am 30 now. It was about time).

You will learn how this simple habit gives you peace of mind and creativity

This blog post is a blueprint how to actually made it happen. The video below shows the actual workflow in my GMail.

If you are anything like me, then you are likely to have either incoming email notifications or a compulsive email checking disorder.

In either case it destroys your ability to work uninterrupted.

That sounds not too bad. But let me give you an idea of the thoughts that came through my mind every time I checked (I already followed this post, disabled notifications and thought I was genius)

These are the times I checked my emails:

• In the morning (thinking: “an appointment today could have changed when I slept”)
• During a work session (whenever someone texts via Google chat, the Gmail tab pops up)
• During a work session (When the Gmail tab switches from (0) to (1). There is even a lab setting enforcing this in a pinned tab… to help you get distracted!)
• Whenever I tried to decide what to do (Subconsciously thinking: “Maybe someone gives me purpose here?!”)
• Finally, in the evening again (“blindly following anyone’s productivity advice […] is not a recipe for success”, Melanie Nelson”)

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This was me doing inbox zero without a plan. Thanks to paperitis.com

What a miserable way of spending the day.

Living reactively, we feel we are getting more done as we multi-task our way through multiple demands on our time and focus. Emma Sue Prince.

And, honestly, I am not proud of myself here. Did I tell you that it took me to the age of 30 to find that out?

The core problem is this

Work becomes RE-active, not PRO-active. It is day and night. It is like this chart:

Interestingly, email habits are a private thing. People talk about productivity and what someone should do. But did you ever hear from a friend “Dude, you have a serious problem?”

No, of course not.

The psychological dark side of emails

A quick search on that topic points to a lot of articles indicating to the correlation of stress and emails.

One study has researched it well with 124 participants. One group could check their emails as often as they want, another group only three times per day.

One researcher found this:

We found that during the limited email use week, participants experienced significantly lower daily stress than during the unlimited email use week.
from Kostadin Kushlev from University British Columbia

I can totally relate.

For me, it was like waking up from a bad dream that I did not even know was a dream. I implemented this habit a week ago and suddenly I got stuff done:

• I wrote an 8 step email autoresponder with 8 blog posts attached at www.maerketing.com/blog, even though I am not a professional copywriter like my buddy John McIntyre.
• I started to reach out to the people who bring me further in business with ease
• I kept myself from bright and shiny objects and focused on what is important (see the eisenhower matrix below)
• Oh, and I had more sex (no kidding)

It was one simple thing that changed my life.

A habit I call the email barrier.

One piece of habit that is about to change my life now. And it can change yours as well (I am dead serious on that).

The Recipe: How the Email Barrier works

You follow these 2 rules religiously:

1. ONCE per day you download all of your emails (ideally after lunch).
2. Inbox Zero ON that day. You take action on all of the emails.

What I do additionally is I set the response time to 23pm. That means, that any answer gets send out at 23pm. Until then I can modify it and amend things. The main purpose is to delay the response and to hide your checking window to others.

If you ask “how to download emails in GMail” read the next section.

Implementation with 2 plugins

Let’s say you use gmail. If you don’t you probably have an even easier time using the offline functionality from your email client. (That function was there for a purpose)

How to download your emails?

Plugin 1: Inbox Pause

I assume here that you use the most popular browser Chrome. Install inboxpause.com it as an extension. Here is a short summary video by Chriss Marr.

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This is how your Gmail will look like after installing it.

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Yes, there is a big blue button on the left that we can toggle. This will give us the barrier functionality (if used right).

Plugin 2: Streak

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Streak is a light-weight CRM that does a lot of things. Important for us is that it does 2 things:

• Send emails to a defined time point (for answering delayed and hide your checking window to others)
• Defer emails to another day. I will explain later.

Habit change (without this, even inbox pause will not help you)

Pick a time per day, ideally after lunch. Why? After eating willpower is highest and anxiety lowest. That is the time you can handle bad and good news the best.

These principles are best explained in the book Willpower (Baumeister/Tierney). Read a summary by Scott Alexander here.

How to download your emails in gmail:

On that time: click UNPAUSE. Wait until all new emails come in. Then click PAUSE again. Immediately. No excuse. No second check. Never.

Then you take the next hour to act on every email you have. Get it down to zero. Only this will free your mind for the creativity that will set free tomorrow morning.

Quick How-to: Getting emails down to zero

If you have read thus far, check out inbox relief from James Schramko (as a resource inside his paid community) or an Inbox Zero talk by Merlin Mann. To give you a quick overview, these are my actions:

• Reply (I set streak to sending at 23pm)
• Delete
• Defer (if I don’t want to appear pushy, I stretch a communication. I set streak to come back to me in some days. If you do it more than twice, plan it.
• Plan: put it into my asana.

Effects

Three things will happen.

Your communication habits will improve

Think about it: when do you leave an email open?

• When you are too anxious to respond: just do it. This habit will help
• When you have a task but wait on someone/something to happen: plan it.
• When you don’t want to answer: delete it. That person will email you again
• When you want to get reminded of something again: defer it

Your peers will respect your time more

To start the Email Barrier, I suggest you place another line in your footer. This is mine:

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This footer sets expectations right

Then just go with it. Anyone who needs you will automatically adjust his around your new habit.

Let’s go through some cases:

• Someone wants to set up a meeting with you. An email back-and-forth via chat does not work any more. Instead, use vyte.in /Assistant.to (recommended from Ryan J Negri  in the comments) or a personal assistant.
• Someone tells you he is late for a meeting, he will skype you. No more email checking while you wait for someone who is late. By the way, listen to Peter Shankman when he freaks out on the topic: IF YOU’RE LATE, IF YOU FLAKE, I’M DONE WITH YOU. THAT’S IT.
• You go back and forth to explain someone something or coordinate a work flow. What a productivity killer. Set up a 30 minute meeting. Or write a proper SOP for your team. Taylor Pearson has a good resource on this, I recommend you check it out.

Still doubts if that works for you?

I know it will be hard in the beginning.

Just consider the potential upside:

Psychological benefits

Willpower: After lunch your blood sugar is high, you are relaxed. The emails you will write will be much better than any other time during the day.

Going to inbox zero will make you more responsive. People having worked with wealthy individuals have found out that most of them are responsive. They are on top of things.

That does not mean responding instantly. It means responding within a short time, like a day.

You get to do project management. Actually the four actions I described earlier totally match the Eisenhower Matrix.

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Great, but how will this change be important for me?

This is paramount:

This is the one thing that will help you write a book. The one thing that will get you from employee to entrepreneur. … Or from entrepreneur to business owner.

You will have undistracted time. Every day until lunch time.

Do something with it.

Build a business. Grow your business. Escape the 9-5.

I want you to take action now. Install the 2 plugins. Then comment here. And then let us know how it went!

The post The Email Barrier –  Kill Email Anxiety once and for all with 2 simple rules appeared first on Till Carlos.