Own Your Mother**cking Inbox

There are three common things that are usually useless and don’t need to be in your inbox. These are:

1. Things you are subscribed to (newsletters/blogs/real estate agents)

2. Meeting minutes

3. Carbon copies (cc)

Imagine how much fewer emails you would get if you eliminated all of these. It’ll finally be liberating to check your inbox again and see that you only have real emails to look at. Things you actually need to work on or respond to. No ‘change management meeting minutes 19/10’. 

Here’s how you can do this in the next few minutes. Let’s start with newsletters and subscriptions.

Step 1. Create a folder within your inbox titled ‘subscriptions’

Step 2. Create a new rule that applies to all incoming emails

Step 3. Ask the rule to send all emails that have the word ‘unsubscribe’ to this folder instead of your inbox.

Step 4. Focus on work that really matters.

If you’re unsure of how to set rules in your inbox, ask Chat GPT. It’ll take a second. 

Meeting minutes can be managed the same way. 

Step 1. Create a folder within your inbox titled ‘meeting minutes’

Step 2. Create a rule that applies to all incoming emails

Step 3. Ask the rule to forward all emails that have the words ‘meeting minutes’ to this folder instead of your inbox.

Step 4. Focus on work that really matters.

See? You can use this for pretty much everything. 

If you dare, feel free to do this for all emails your carbon copied into. If you’re cc’d in something it’s not usually something that you need to action directly. It’s just for your visibility. Sometimes it’s important to be in these emails so I would set aside maybe 30 minutes every week to go through this folder solely so you can monitor what you need to. 

When you’re going through his folder and you see the same person adding you into emails all the time, it’s probably a problem you can fix.  It could mean that either you don't trust them, they think you don't trust them. They might be nervous about the outcome or correspondence they are sending. Fix the root cause. Tell them you don't want to be cc'd because you trust them. Actually mean it. If they cc you into something you're not expecting, ask them why they did it, drive out the root cause and address it.

When I lead a sales team one of the guys cc'd me into his conversations about high-value deals. When I asked him why, he said he 'just wanted me to know'. It was an attempt to show off. I said to him I trusted him with it, and to show me the results. Call me if there’s anything I can add to the deal.

Often, my team members would cc me into an email going directly to my manager or someone senior to me. Even here, I challenged them to build strong enough relationships with my seniors that they don't need to cc me in. Instead, give me an update in our regular catch up. If their email isn't up to scratch, I’d hear about it and help them learn from it. Again, not the end of the world, so no need to be nervous with trusting your employees.

Go through this exercise now. Set a quality measure for your inbox.

Feel free to share these steps with your team members too if they work for you. I’ve found that most of my team was losing a lot of time with email management. It’s a real time waster across the board. Save them from the pain.