How to Stop Checking Email on the Evenings and Weekends
8 tips that can help eliminate—as a start—compulsive inboxing during the evenings and weekends.
Treat all of them as short experiments and customize.
#1 “Batch” email at set times
Have an email-checking schedule and do not deviate.
Use template autoresponders to alert people of your email schedule and encourage them to call if something needs faster attention (the “urgent” email-to-call conversion is usually less than 10%).
Have your first batch around 10 or 11 a.m. and never first thing in the morning, as you want a meaningful volume (1/4-1/3rd of the daily total), and you should accomplish at least one critical to-do before going into reactive mode.
#2 Send and read email at different times
Go offline and respond to all emails to avoid having the outgoing flow interrupted by immediate responses.
Ever noticed how effective it is to respond to your email while on an airplane?
Manufacture that environment by going offline to batch send.
#3 Don’t scan email if you can’t immediately fix problems encountered
One simple example: don’t scan the inbox on Friday evening or over the weekend if you might encounter work problems that can’t be addressed until Monday.
This is the perfect way to ruin a weekend with preoccupation.
#4 Don’t BIF people during off-hours
“BIF” stands for “before I forget” and refers to emails sent on evenings or weekends out of fear of forgetting a to-do or follow-up.
Instead, externalize follow-ups and to-do’s in a small notebook like a Moleskine instead of entering the “bet you can’t eat just one” inbox.
#5 Don’t use the inbox for reminders or as a to-do list
Don’t mark items as “unread,” star them, or otherwise leave them in the inbox as a constant reminder of required actions.
This just creates a visual distraction while leading you to evaluate the same items over and over.
Put them into a calendar (or Moleskine or another capturing system) for follow-up and archive the email, even if that calendar item is just “Respond to 2/10 email from Suzie.”
#6 Set rules for email-to-phone escalation
One Senior VP in a Fortune 500 company recently told me that he’s established a simple policy with his direct reports that has cut email volume by almost 40%: once a decision generates more than four emails total in a thread, someone needs to pick up the phone to resolve the issue.
#7 Before writing an email, ask yourself: “what problem am I trying to solve?” or “what is my ideal outcome?”
Unclear purpose, usually a symptom of striving to be busy instead of productive, just requires later clarification from all parties and multiplies back-and-forth volume.
Be clear in desired results or don’t hit that Send button.
#8 Learn to make suggestions instead of asking questions
Stop asking for suggestions or solutions and start proposing them.
Rather than asking when someone would like to meet next week, propose your ideal times and second choices.
Stop the back and forth and make a decision. Practice this in both personal and professional environments.
Here are a few lines that help (my favorites are the first and last):
“Can I make a suggestion?”
“I propose…”
“I’d like to propose…”
“I suggest that… what do you think?”
“Let’s try… and then try something else if that doesn’t work.”
Remember: in email, the small things are the big things.
If you can cut an exchange from six to three email messages, that’s a 50% reduction in your inbox volume over time.
This can make the difference between working all the time and leaving the office (both physically and mentally) at 5 p.m.
Less is more.