Email has become a Thorn in Our Side. It’s big. It’s ugly. It’s a Beast.
It not what we think.
Here’s what we believe about our email problem:
- too many emails
- not enough time
- can’t get caught up
- always responding to other people’s priorities
Those aren’t problems, they are symptoms.
The real problem with email is that it’s become a beast that you think you can control. You can’t. Experiencing this gap leads to frustration, feelings of overwhelm and even feelings of inadequacy.
THIS is the problem because these feelings erode your confidence.
You are CEO of your work sphere which means you make a lot of decisions all day long. When you take hits to your confidence in one area, for example email, your effectiveness in managing the rest of your sphere also suffers.
Are any of these underlying de-motivators sabotaging you?
FOMO (fear of missing out). Obsessively checking for news, alerts and info that’s going on in your sphere driven by the feeling that you’re going to miss being in the loop.
Procrastination. Avoiding a project you don’t love, making a difficult decision, or not being clear on what the next step is.
Info Addict. Pathologically seeking more and new information.
Escapist. Confused about your priorities, i.e. have so many “important” things that nothing is important (thus email becomes an escape mechanism.)
Self-importance. Feeling self-important when you’re constantly checking email and taking pride in responding ultra-quickly.
Decision-phobia. Avoid making decisions except when your feet are held to the fire.
Blame displacement. Using the excuse of other people’s priorities (showing up in your inbox) as the reason you aren’t doing your important work.
Or spending too little time in your inbox because of:
Rebellion. Avoiding staying up on inbox because you just don’t want to deal with it and no one’s going to make you.
Pain-avoidance. It’s so big, anything you do barely makes a dent, and it always leaves you feeling crappy.
The remedy.
Disorganization provides ample opportunity (welcome or not) to learn about yourself. And the cool thing is that it also gives you opportunity for empowerment!
Two steps for getting liberated from the beastly beast:
- Acknowledge your underlying de-motivators
This is the beginning. If any of those jumped out as bug-a-boos for you, take a moment to acknowledge it. By seeing it now, you’ll more easily catch yourself in the act. Self-awareness provides the chance to change. - Support yourself with structure
How you manage your work, i.e. your systems and habits provide you with a blueprint to rely on when de-motivators threaten to harass you.
As CEO of your work, your job is to stay aware of your priorities, manage work accordingly and glean relevance from incoming info. Your tools and systems should support you in these intentions.
Email is a part of your biz life.
Spending time and energy to process your email is a cost of doing business.
Besides unsubscribing from lists that are no longer relevant to you, you can only do so much to control the amount of email that comes your way.
Therefore, a shift of mindset is in order! Transform the email pain problem into a “how I manage my work” structural issue—because this is something you can change.
You can learn a system. You can learn skills. You can pick up tools that support you. These are actionable intentions.
The best part is that they chase away the negativity brought on by the beast and restores your can-do attitude.
One of the places to learn a wholistic email system that restores your role of CEO is right here at Natural Professional HQ with the Annihilate Email Agony Course.
Learn how to manage your email and organize the chaos like nobody’s business.
Our next course offering is an in-person class in Nevada City at Sierra Commons. Click here to be alerted of online offerings.