The Pit of Email Despair

Josh Getzler

I need to change my email routine. It is obvious. I spend my day facing my computer looking at my inbox. Certainly when I’m writing another email or talking on the phone or going to a meeting or reading, I’m not always seeing the inbox, but my subconscious takes in the relentless rectangular flashes at the bottom right corner of the monitor, and I know the list is building.

It used to be that I’d get an email every few minutes, here and there, and the vast majority were Fresh Direct ads or news aggregations or unsolicited queries, where I was able to filter them to a folder to read and discard (aggregations), read and respond (queries), or just discard (ANOTHER offer to transfer my credit card balance). A few times a day I’d hear from an editor or a client or another agent or a friend or my wife or mother (or now, surreally, my son, which really freaks me out). Those I’d answer right away, then continue what I was doing.

The other day, though, I realized that I had email-surfed for three straight hours without stop. Every time I’d finish responding to someone, three more appeared on the top of the inbox, frequently responding to another email in the thread, and therefore needing further response.

So this is what it feels like to drown.

Look, on some level it’s a good thing, that there is enough on my plate to keep me occupied steadily—frantically!—all day long when I let it. It also certainly becomes addictive, as any spouse of an email-beholden person will tell you, and you don’t want to let ANY time elapse before responding. But that kind of instant gratification very rapidly becomes counterproductive and incredibly stressful when not managed appropriately.

I have two wonderful clients, Cali Yost and Whitney Johnson (actually I have many more than two, but I’m only going to discuss these ones—the rest of you will have your turn!), who are truly remarkable at managing this kind of chaos. Cali is an expert in work-life fit management (which barely scratches the surface of her genius), while Whitney, who has a varied business resume ranging from venture capital to Harvard Business Review blogging, has become a remarkable advocate for disrupting your routine. You see where this is going? I clearly am stuck in workplace quicksand with this never-ending email procession, and need to disrupt my behavior in order to accomplish my own daily agenda, rather than finding myself at 5:30 with half my to-do list open and falling further behind.

This is going to be a process, I can see, both because it’ll be tough to change what’s been a very ingrained habit—I get an email, I look at it, I respond if I can, and then I move on (and it’s however many minutes later). Whether it’s pressing on with my list and only going to non-agenda emails at certain times of day (except emergencies); or giving myself a certain number of minutes per hour; or setting up a new filtering system; or…something I haven’t thought of (and I’m certainly open to suggestions), I still need to accomplish the following:

1)      I still need to service my clients—be responsive, as timely as possible, be THERE for them.

2)      I need to figure out how to be nimble enough to simultaneously trouble-shoot and press on with the agenda for the day.

I’m not ADD—In fact I really hate multi-tasking, even though I need to do it all day. I’d much rather write a long list, start at A and go to Z, and go home. But this job is more interesting than that, and more spontaneous, so I have to balance it all. These are fascinating problems. They have less to do with publishing than with business or life in this incredibly fast, always connected world. They’re not unique, and they may be simplistic. But they’re not simple, and I’ve got to fix them. We’ll see how it works.

 

 

 

Comments

[Patti Abbott]

I am not an agent, nor an editor, nor a publisher. I have no title or power or money. But just from a blog and some writing, I average 50-75 emails a day. Why do we need to be in such constant communication with each other? Twitter, no thanks.

[Jeff Cohen]

I see--so it's my fault, is it?