Carla Miller [00:00:01]:
Does it feel like your email inbox is out of control or taking over your entire working day and possibly some of your nonworking day as well. If so, a, I totally understand how you feel, and b, this is the podcast episode for you to listen to. So in this week's episode, I am interviewing Faye Wallace, who's a career and executive coach, and we are talking about some super practical things that you can do to reduce the eval overwhelm in your life. And Faye really knows her stuff. She's got a background in HR. She specializes in coaching HR and people professionals, and she also has a fantastic podcast called HR coffee time, which has episodes with loads and loads of practical tips within them. So I really enjoyed this conversation where you can get some ideas that you can put into place this week to reduce that email overwhelm. And stay tuned to the end because I'm gonna share some insights from my favorite book of the moment relating to email overwhelm and a completely different way of thinking about it.

Carla Miller [00:01:11]:
This is the influence and impact podcast for women leaders, helping you confidently navigate the ups and downs of leadership and feel less alone on your journey as a leader. My name's Carla Miller. I've been coaching leaders for the past 15 years, and I'm here to remind you of the value that you bring to your organization. To help you believe in yourself, and to share practical tools and insights from myself, and my brilliant guests that will help you succeed in your career. I'm delighted to welcome the always very smiley and positive, Faye, back to the podcast. Faye, welcome back to Influence and Impact.

Fay Wallis [00:01:53]:
Oh, it's so exciting to be back, Carla. Thank you very much for having me again.

Carla Miller [00:01:57]:
Now for those of you that missed the first episode I did with Faye, I wanna ask Faye to just tell us a little bit about her background and what she does, how she helps people.

Fay Wallis [00:02:08]:
Of course. Well, again, thank you for asking me to introduce myself. So I'm Faye Wallis, I'm a career and executive coach, and I've been a coach now for 8 years, which I can't quite believe, it feels like the time has flown by. And prior to that I predominantly had an HR and recruitment career, which sort of naturally led on to the career coaching because I'd done so much recruitment, I kept being asked by people for help and advice with getting their next role or changing careers. And then once I immersed myself in that world, I then started being asked to help people who were in their role and maybe struggling a little bit. And then that's when the executive coaching started as well. And then in addition to that, I also have a podcast, which you have been a fabulous guest on, Carla, which is called HR Coffee Time.

Carla Miller [00:02:55]:
Excellent. And that's for HR leaders primarily, isn't

Fay Wallis [00:02:59]:
it? It is. It is. So, well, it's actually for all HR professionals. I started it initially as a career development podcast for the HR community. Having worked in HR for such a long time and being a big podcast fan, I could see there wasn't anything really covering that area. It's now expanded a little bit, so we talk about all sorts of topics on the show, but I like to keep it similar to yours, Carla. I've been listening to your podcast for years and just absolutely love it. I love how practical it is.

Fay Wallis [00:03:27]:
So that's what I try and do with HR Coffee Time too, make sure there are lots of practical tips in there.

Carla Miller [00:03:33]:
Excellent. And I love Faye's episodes, so do head over there if you work in HR. Honestly, there's lots of stuff in there that isn't HR specific either that's great. And she's being very modest. It also regularly charts very, very highly in the careers podcast chart. Okay. So, that's a little bit about Faye. Now there's lots of different topics that we could talk about, but we decided to talk about email overwhelm because it's something that just seems to come up on a regular basis.

Carla Miller [00:04:02]:
What is it about emails and the overwhelm that interests you, Faye?

Fay Wallis [00:04:07]:
I think selfishly, a lot of the things that I seem to create, whether that's a podcast episode or I have something called the HR planner, which is a career and time management planning guide, they all arise from the fact that it's something I've found hard myself. And then I've seen other people find it difficult too. So you realise, oh my gosh, it's not just me, I'm not alone in this. And I'm quite motivated by the idea of helping other people. So I've researched a fair amount into emails and what makes them so challenging for people and just time management stuff generally. And then I've tried out lots of the tips for myself because it's something that I can get very overwhelmed by and I can find difficult. And I think it's one of those weird things, whereas if you find something hard, it's often then easier for you to empathize with and understand other people who are finding it challenging and then to help them too. So that's where it stems from, it's purely selfish reasons to begin with, but then lovely to know it helps others too.

Carla Miller [00:05:07]:
Excellent. Well, I was reading earlier that the average professional receives a 121 emails during their working day, which seems like loads. I also think that there are probably some organizations where there's a lot more than that going on. So, hopefully, we're gonna be able to share some useful tips to help deal with the overwhelm. We haven't necessarily said that we're aiming for you to reach inbox 0 or anything like that, have we? What are your thoughts on inbox 0? Do you personally aim for inbox 0? If only. That would be absolutely wonderful. Let's hope by, if I'm lucky enough

Fay Wallis [00:05:44]:
to come on your show again Carla in the future, let's hope I've cracked that by then. I think it is a brilliant thing to aspire to, but not something that's always the easiest thing to do for all of us. I do know some people who manage it, but even with putting all of my own advice into place, it's quite rare that I've managed to get down completely to 0.

Carla Miller [00:06:06]:
I try and do it just before I go on holiday by using so I have, Google Mail runs mine, and you can snooze emails for a period of time, like, until a specific date. So I'm like, okay. I'm not gonna look at those whilst I'm on holiday. There's there I and I think you're probably gonna us not to do this. I do use my email as a little bit of a to do list, my inbox. And there are some things in there which I like to do one day, but not right now, and they just get moved Basically, every 2 weeks, they get moved forward 2 weeks. On a Monday morning, suddenly, they all appear, which is a bit stressful. So that's the only time I do inbox zero.

Carla Miller [00:06:41]:
To be honest, the thing I celebrate getting down to 0 in my life is washing basket 0. Like, I have a little dance party when my house's washing basket has got down to 0 because that is such a rare occurrence. I'm like, oh my goodness. So, yeah, that's that's my main goal in life. Inbox 0 has not reached the top of the goal list. Okay. So I know you've got some principles that you have learned and tried and tested. Let's go through some of those.

Carla Miller [00:07:05]:
So what's the first thing that comes to mind for you when it comes to how you personally tackle email overwhelm?

Fay Wallis [00:07:13]:
Well, I think what happens is that I get fairly on top of my emails. Maybe I've even reached that wonderful inbox 0 state, and that will have often happened, and this is going to sound absolutely terrible, if I'm on holiday, when ideally, obviously you don't really want anyone to be checking their emails, but what will happen is if I'm sitting on the plane, for example, on the way out there, or we're travelling in a taxi or a car, I'll just think, I'm just going to use this time. I've told everyone I'm going to be away, so hopefully I'm not going to be as inundated. I'm just going to go through and delete as much as I can and start, start clearing it down. So then I feel so happy with the world and life a bit like when you get to washing, basket 0, Carla. And then of course what happens is that a few weeks down the line, or perhaps a couple of months down the line, I start thinking, oh my gosh, like, am I forgetting things? What's happened to my inbox? There are so many emails in here. I think I've lulled myself into a false sense of security when I do get down to that 0 point. So it's at that point when I suddenly start to get that overwhelmed feeling that I think, okay, Faye, just take a step back, you know what to do, How are you going to tackle this? So the first thing that I do is sort everything by sender.

Fay Wallis [00:08:31]:
So in your inbox, obviously, you can filter by pretty much anything, whether that's date, subject, or, or sender. And when you do that, you'll see that you've got huge groups of emails. So for example, I subscribe to CIPD updates, their professional body for HR professionals, and they email me all the time and it's really helpful stuff, but the danger is that I'll just leave it sitting in my inbox and think, oh, I'll get to that. I'll get to that. And then when the overwhelm has struck and I do that filter, I'll suddenly realise, oh my gosh, I've got 25 emails from the CIPD, but I wouldn't have realised that before. It's only when you see them all bunched together. And I think when you see it all bunched together like that, you think, this is ridiculous. I haven't read an email from them for the last 25 days.

Fay Wallis [00:09:17]:
I'm just going to delete them all and I'm going to start again. You know, they're information ones. They're not anything that's really, really important normally. If there is something in there that looks important, like maybe my membership has to renew, then obviously I'm not going to delete that one. But then all you have to do is select everything in that chunk, hit the delete button and suddenly your inbox. Oh, it's a wonderful feeling. I sound like such a geek, Carla. It's such a wonderful feeling when you just suddenly see all these emails disappear.

Fay Wallis [00:09:44]:
So it's a really, really simple technique, but it is so much faster than starting at the top of your inbox and thinking, okay, I'll go through every email 1 by 1, which I think is what our default state often is. We just think, okay, it's all right, come on. Let's get on top of it. I've got 30 minutes, I'll start working my way through it. But if you do that, you never ever get past about 12 emails before the next thing happens or you get called into a meeting or you get distracted. And so there's all this stuff sort of cluttering up the rest of your inbox, and it's more likely that you're going to miss loads of stuff. So that's the very first thing is just group everything, delete all of the things that just aren't important, you don't need, you're instantly going to feel a little bit better about it.

Carla Miller [00:10:29]:
Excellent. I don't actually do that, so I'm gonna give that one a try. And that thing you were saying about going through them all in order, I think we waste so much time doing that because you're also just go you you're going into a different mindset each time. You're right, like, thinking about a different project or different activity each time you're looking at those emails. But this it's this urge to clear the decks, basically, to feel more in control. I've just been reading a book called 4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. Have you read that one yet?

Fay Wallis [00:10:58]:
I have read that book. Yes. I've had it recommended to me a few times. And what oh, you're actually, I won't say anything because you're probably about to say a really brilliant tip from it. I don't want to spoil it in case I say the same one.

Carla Miller [00:11:09]:
Well, there's loads of good stuff in there. The one that I was thinking of is the this idea of how focusing on clearing the decks because we it thinks it will give us a we think it will give us a sense of control isn't actually useful at all. We just need to sort of accept that the decks will never be fully cleared, and that's okay, and instead be more intentional about spending our time on the important stuff. But if you if you heard another tip from there that's relevant, then do feel free to share that because there's so much wisdom in that book. I was listening, on a 5 hour drive the other day, and I was like, oh, I need to keep pausing this, but I can't take notes whilst I'm driving, so I'm just gonna have to go and reread the physical book because there's so much wisdom in there.

Fay Wallis [00:11:51]:
That's the problem, isn't it, if you're listening to books while you're driving? I've done exactly the same thing. Yes, it's exactly the same, example I was going to give. I found it liberating when I read that part of the book, that was my favourite piece of advice that he gives, which is that you are never going to be able to get everything done that's sitting on your to do list, whether that's getting through your inbox or it's something else. And it's strangely freeing and liberating hearing that, realizing that you're not failing, you're not doing anything hideously wrong if you're not completely on top of everything. Actually, the amount of stuff going on all the time just means it isn't physically possible

Carla Miller [00:12:29]:
to do it. Definitely. And I guess that if you group things by sender as well, that makes it easier for you to see which emails you're regularly receiving that you don't want to receive anymore.

Fay Wallis [00:12:42]:
Yes. And that was going to be my second tip, which is start unsubscribing. Hit that unsubscribe button. It's so good now that everyone, when they're sending an email, if they're a company and you're on an email subscription list, has to have an unsubscribe link in there. And if they don't have an unsubscribe link in there, you can either flag it as spam or actually do what I do when I get on a mission with this and reply to them and say, please remove me from your database, because they're not allowed to carry on emailing you without your permission. And I don't know about you Carla, but I get carried away. I'll see an interesting article or a great download and I think, oh yes, I definitely want to know more about that. Or that looks like a brilliant email newsletter to be subscribed to.

Fay Wallis [00:13:26]:
And some of them are fabulous and I will hopefully never unsubscribe from them, but other ones, it just ends up with, again, you see a cluster of like 30 emails in your inbox that you're, you're just never opening it. So at that point I say, just go through and start unsubscribing from stuff. And again, it's just a great feeling because you are going to get so fewer emails. And I remember there was one newsletter I was subscribed to for years, and I don't know why I felt really attached to it. Like, oh, I can't unsubscribe. I'm going to miss these tips. But I just knew that I wasn't really enjoying the emails. I wasn't really getting very much from them anymore.

Fay Wallis [00:14:05]:
It was a lot of very similar content and I unsubscribed and I've never missed it at all. I don't wake up in the morning thinking, oh, what a shame I unsubscribed from that one emailed newsletter, you know, oh, that's ruined my life. So, I'd really encourage everyone. It's weird how quickly our inboxes can start filling up again. So I go through these purges really of, I've got to inbox 0, hooray, then everything gets out of control again. So we do the grouping, everything by sender. And then the next thing I do is just go through everything that I can see I'm not opening or engaging with and just start unsubscribing. And it will give you a little bit, little bit of inbox peace for a good few months until we start accidentally subscribing to loads of stuff again, if you're anything like me.

Carla Miller [00:14:52]:
I love it. And sometimes I can be a really good ruthless unsubscriber, particularly if I am, like, checking email returning from holiday or something, and, I'm like, no. I don't want this clogging up my inbox. I've also I have a, like, folder system, and I know you're gonna share your folder system, which sounds way more efficient. But I have a learning folder, which is okay. This is this is interesting. I haven't got time to look at it yet. I clearly never go back and visit the learning folder, so there's a lot of wisdom hidden in my inbox somewhere.

Carla Miller [00:15:23]:
I also have a to explore folder, which is like, oh, that's an interesting idea of something I could do. So that if I ever get to the point where I have some free time to think about creative ideas, then I can go there for inspiration. There are also some emails that are not subscriptions. They're just people cold mailing me. And I always have a is it a moral dilemma? I always feel guilty if I just delete those, but I've become quite ruthless about my time. So I for example, we both have podcasts. We get a lot of emails from people requesting to be on the podcast. Now if someone has sent me an email and they clearly have actually looked at what my podcast is about and it's a relevant thing, I will go back and reply and say, I don't accept guest requests.

Carla Miller [00:16:08]:
Sorry. But it's when it's, like, a totally random, irrelevant topic. I'm like, no. I'm just gonna delete this. Because otherwise people are grabbing your and that's just one example. There's loads of that stuff. And, you know, all the people trying to sell you stuff. And and all these people trying to grab your time as if they're entitled to it, and it's like, no.

Carla Miller [00:16:26]:
You can't have my time to reply to all these emails. So I've started to be a bit of a ruthless deleter of emails. What do you like with those cold emails? Do you delete them, or do you send a nice reply?

Fay Wallis [00:16:40]:
It's so interesting hearing you talking about it, it Carla, because that is something that a lot of people will mention to me if they're talking about their inboxes getting out of control. It's the frustration of all those cold emails about stuff that often has nothing to do with us. So if I'm getting something that's cold and they obviously have no idea about my company or about me, they are just emailing anyone who has a registered business, say in the UK, then I'm much more inclined to just hit delete. If it's something about the podcast, I now have a email template that I send. So that is one other tip that might be helpful for people as well is think about what kind of inquiries do you get all the time. And you may be thinking, well, I don't get any inquiries that are the same all the time, but I'd really challenge you on that. We do tend to get asked quite similar questions by people and that may only be once a year. A lot of my thinking will often be in the world of HR because that is my background and that's where I do a lot of coaching.

Fay Wallis [00:17:44]:
So for example, as an HR professional, you might be responsible for overseeing the performance appraisal system. And so you know that you're going to be sending out certain emails, say 4 times a year, and you're probably gonna get certain inquiries coming back. So instead of writing an email from scratch to send to everybody or to reply to those inquiries, just taking that tiny bit of time to set up some email templates that you can then use as your reply. It's, I sound really over the top when I say these things, but I think little things like this can feel life changing. The first time you use them and you think, gosh, I didn't have to use my brain at all. All I had to do was just copy and paste or hit send templates. It's just a wonderful feeling because as you were alluding to earlier, Carla, it's hard to get out of your inbox, it starts sucking you in and taking up time. And I think the most dangerous part of it is your mental time.

Fay Wallis [00:18:41]:
You know how we get physically tired, but we get mentally tired as well. I know sometimes if I've been in my inbox a lot during the day, by the end of the day, I feel exhausted, even if I haven't moved from my desk. And that's because I've been having to use my brain constantly, like read the email, what's it about, thinking, think about a reply, how am I going to draft it so it's the right reply? So just those little shortcuts by having email templates make all the difference. So now when I get a podcast inquiry, I just send them the templated reply, which is like, thanks so much for your interest. And I have a podcast application form now. So I say, if you are interested in applying to be on the show, please use this form, then you're in the system, then we'll get back to you. And I learned to do that from Aoife O'Brien, who I know has been a guest on your show as well, Carla, who's got the Happier at Work podcast. She's amazing at automating things and having systems.

Fay Wallis [00:19:33]:
So I used her idea of having this application form. And again, it's transformed my life, just made things so much easier. And I've set up email templates to reply whether it's going to be a decline or an exec. So although everyone listening might not have a podcast or they may not work in HR, I really hope just thinking about the idea of what can I just template, even if it's a few sentences, it doesn't have to be a really lengthy email at all? What, what can I do that with that is going to save me time? I promise it will make a massive difference.

Carla Miller [00:20:04]:
I bet. In all sorts of different working environments, there is there is a lot of repetitive conversations going on via email, and so to be able to do that would be useful. So you can cut and paste. You mentioned send template because I was gonna ask if you use shortcuts because there are some, like, macros, aren't they? And there there are different I can't think of anything off the top of my head, but there is one software you have to pay for, but you can kind of automate lots of things in terms of, templates. But when when you said send template, what did you mean by that?

Fay Wallis [00:20:34]:
Okay. So in Outlook, you can create email templates. And so when you send a new message, instead of clicking, when you click new message, you can select send new email from template, and it will just open up a pre populated email that you've already written before. So again, as an example, from maybe an onboarding perhaps you've got someone new joining your team, although you might only have someone new join your team a couple of times a year, well that's 2 emails you've got to think about. So you would just write a really, really good email when you're feeling fresh and, alert, and you know that it's going to be great and you're not exhausted at the end of the day and can only think of 2 lines, you know, welcoming that person to the team and introducing them to everybody. And so for your template, it will say something that, you know, dear x x x x, and that's where you're going to enter their name, you know, welcome to the team, etcetera, etcetera. And then in Outlook, you just go file, save as email template. And so then when someone joins your team later on in the year, you don't have to think, oh no, what am I going to write? My brain stopped working.

Fay Wallis [00:21:37]:
I've got so many meetings today. I don't want this to seem really curt and abrupt by just saying welcome to the team. You'll go, oh yes, I've got an email template, file, you know, new email from template and tada, your beautifully written email is there. And all you've got to do is tweak it slightly by putting in their name and maybe some other information. So that's what I mean by templates. Thanks so much for asking me to clarify. It's awful, isn't it? When you're doing this stuff all the time, it can be easy to get that everyone may not know what on earth you're talking about.

Carla Miller [00:22:07]:
Yep. I don't think I've used Outlook for about 8 years. So there's probably all sorts of different things on Outlook. I think Gmail might have something similar, so I need to go and sort that out. The other thing that we were talking about in terms of unsubscribing is in a internal work context, a lot of my clients, they're obviously at leadership level. They are getting copied in on a lot of emails from people who are, I'm trying to think of a better phrase, but I can't, essentially covering their own arses. So, basically, they're they're sending it thinking, well, my boss has now seen it. So if there's something wrong with it, then they will let me know, or they will check it's good enough quality.

Carla Miller [00:22:48]:
I I feel like there's a lot of passing responsibility happening, kind of surreptitiously using the cc function. And so I quite often when, clients come to me and say, look. I want to empower my team, and I want them to need me less. I wanna free myself up to do some more strategic work. We look at okay. So where are you being cc'd? Where are you being drawn in in an email context as well as as well as other context, and how can you set some boundaries around that. So, also, people can look up unsubscribing from some of those internal emails. Whilst, obviously, you can't email your boss and go, please unsubscribe me.

Carla Miller [00:23:27]:
You can talk to your team members and say that you're copying me in, and, actually, that sits at your level of authority. That's your level of responsibility. I only want to be copied in if it's something that's relevant at my level.

Fay Wallis [00:23:43]:
Absolutely. That's such good advice. And it points to so many other things around effective leadership, doesn't it? As in, are people copying you in on everything because you're never sitting down to spend any time with them 1 on 1, so they feel that's the only way of getting your attention. So those things can happen for all sorts of reasons. So is that an established culture within the organisation? I remember having one coaching client and I'd never seen anything like it Carla. I mean, I think you said the average number of emails we get is 121 a day. I mean, she was getting 100. It must have been close to 300 a day because when the pandemic had struck, they were so worried that everyone in the organisation would not know what was going on with each other, that they introduced a policy where everyone had to cc everyone in everything.

Fay Wallis [00:24:32]:
It was just unbelievable. She was so overwhelmed. I don't know how she was, yeah, I think I'd be not able to sleep at night if that was my inbox. So in that instance, you know, that was a culture that was just not healthy or helpful at all. So sometimes, especially if you are at a leadership level, you have got the authority and the power and the influence to be able to establish change across the whole organization and say, hang on a minute, you know, this is affecting everybody. Have we got to put some new guidelines in around how we are communicating throughout the whole organization.

Carla Miller [00:25:08]:
Absolutely. And I think, I was very broadly generalizing with the covering the arses, but I think if you're getting cc'd on lots of things, then work out why. Establish why. Have the conversations to understand why are you being cc'd, and then look up, right, is there anything we can change around here so that that's not happening, and I'm not getting quite so overwhelmed. And particularly when people are going through a change process, there's a lot of, uncertainty going on, and we see a lot more ceasing at that point. Okay. What other top tips do you have for people in terms of reducing this evil email overwhelm?

Fay Wallis [00:25:45]:
Well, another tip that I have is one that I have to admit to not having put into action properly yet. It's one of those things that on paper just seems absolutely brilliant. And so in preparation for today's color, I thought I cannot publicly recommend this to everyone, but I'm not doing it myself, this seems terrible. So yesterday I actually set this system up and I am hoping to be able to stick to it to properly test it, but it just seems such a simple but good idea. And it's not mine. It's from Graham Olcott, who is the author of How to be a Productivity Ninja. And he talks about getting to inbox 0. And one of the things he recommends doing is instead of having absolutely loads of folders in your inbox, which, I mean, I have got so many folders, there's less than they used to be, but I've still got quite a lot.

Fay Wallis [00:26:39]:
Like you, Carla, I'm sure I used to have one called learning or something that literally I never ever looked in. So he talks about having 3 folders, and this is to stop you using your inbox as your to do list, because it's impossible to use your inbox as a really effective to do list. You're just going to drop the ball on stuff if you're getting a lot of email. So his thinking is the minute an email comes in, you triage it and you put it in, you either deal with it or you put it into 1 of 3 folders. And so the folders they're titled, they've got the at symbol because that means that they'll sit at the top of your inbox. You know, how everything's listed alphabetically folded twice. And then there is read. So that's stuff you would like to read later.

Fay Wallis [00:27:22]:
So that's your learning folder, Carla. And for me, it will be all those newsletters that, like the CIPD one that I can't bring myself to unsubscribe to, but I just don't need to be reading it all the time and I don't need it cluttering up my inbox. So anything that you want to read later that's not urgent in any way, shape or form, you just pop it into that read folder straight away. Then the second one is waiting. And so often when our inbox starts creeping up when we're using it as a to do list is because we're waiting on someone to come back to us about something and you don't want to forget it. So perhaps you've had an email inquiry and you think, oh, I'm not sure what the answer is, or actually I need, this person on the team to come back to me. So you then might forward it onto someone or email someone and say, oh, hi, I've been asked this query, can you come back to me? So you don't delete the original email because you've still got to reply to that person and you need to remember it and you're using your inbox like a to do list. So instead of doing all of that, if there's something where you're waiting on a reply, you move it into a folder that you've called waiting.

Fay Wallis [00:28:27]:
So, you know, that folder is more important than your read one. It's, it's one you have to check. You can't just leave it forever, but it means that you have been able to move that email straight out of your inbox instead of having it, cluttered up. Then your final one that you're going to have, so you only need to have 3 folders in your inbox that you're worrying about and actively looking at all the time, The other one is action. So that means you have got to take action. So I was quite enjoying doing this, having read this tip, oh my goodness, I think maybe 7 or 8 years ago and kept thinking, oh, what a good idea. Graham seems like a genius. It seems so simple yet so effective.

Fay Wallis [00:29:07]:
And then having never put it into practice, I'm very grateful to you Carla for inviting me on the show, which has prompted me to actually try it out. So I set it up yesterday and I have to say, I was really enjoying going through my inbox, just popping everything in and just seeing your inbox drastically drop down. So it means that really not my full to do list, but now anything urgent, anything I know I've got to get back to, it's all in that action folder. So when we have finished our interview today, that's what I'm going to be doing, popping into that action folder and thinking, right, this is what I need to tackle, rather than doing what I'm terrible at and just getting distracted by the stuff that should be in the read folder. Because I'll start the day and think, oh, I've got something really urgent to do. Oh gosh, that looks interesting. Oh yeah. I haven't seen that research.

Fay Wallis [00:29:53]:
I'll just read it for 2 minutes. I'll just read it for 2 minutes. And then it's stolen my time. So it's not really just about inbox management and email overwhelm. I think it's a great time management tip full stop. So, yeah, if I'm ever lucky enough to come back on the show, Carly, you'll have to ask me if I've managed to stick to that piece of advice and how it's going.

Carla Miller [00:30:12]:
You have to let me know. Ironically, I subscribe to Graham's email, but it is a weekly one that comes in at 4 o'clock on a Sunday, and it's always full of it's it's short, and it's always got a bit of wisdom in it that sets me up for the week. I'm just trying to it's called beyond busy, I think. Graham is super wise. He's also been a guest on the podcast talking about kind leadership, so I'll link to that in the show notes as well. Now you mentioned doing that as soon as emails come in. Do you check emails throughout the day, or do you allocate particular times to do that?

Fay Wallis [00:30:46]:
Again, I've tried different ways of tackling this. So popular advice is to set yourself, set times to check your emails during the day. So some people will carve out setting some time at the beginning of the day and the end of the day. And I think that's a great technique because otherwise the danger is that all you're doing for your job is going to meetings and answering emails, and that's when you can really feel like, oh my goodness, I've got all this important work I'm supposed to be doing, How am I going to deliver on all the stuff that we're talking about in the meetings? How am I going to deliver on this project? Or how am I going to get this strategy done? And so it actually moves way past email overwhelm into life overwhelm and work overwhelm at this point. And that is because it's not an effective use of your time. There's that classic book now called Deep Work by Cal Newport. And he talks about the fact that nowadays in our society, the real value in the work that we do comes from what he refers to as deep work. And so that's focused work where you're giving yourself a chunk of time to work on something important.

Fay Wallis [00:31:53]:
So it will typically be something that's going to be project related. And I'm sure everyone listening and, and you Carla and me, we can all think of something where we have managed to sort of shut ourselves away or not look at emails and silence notifications and crack on with something that has been important for us and our job. And there's just such a sense of accomplishment when you've done that. And it's so much harder to do that if you're actually getting distracted

Carla Miller [00:32:26]:
self and what you're like. So even if I set myself times

Fay Wallis [00:32:26]:
of the day, self and what you're like. So even if I set myself times of the day where I think I'm going to be checking email, I've found that I'm not necessarily disciplined enough about doing that. What I am disciplined about doing is if I've got other things in my calendar. So, you know, if I've got coaching clients or I do a lot of co working, which is sometimes called body doubling. So for anyone listening, who's not familiar with this idea, if you are someone like me who can get distracted or who can find it hard to really stay focused on that important deep work, A great tactic that you can use is to double up with someone else. So to give you an example, let's say Carla, you and I both decide we want to write a book. So you have written your fabulous book already. Let's say you want to write another one.

Fay Wallis [00:33:17]:
And we're both just busy, busy, busy, you know, emails, emails, emails, and, lots of meetings and coaching work and workshops and things. And we feel like we're never getting around to it. What we would do is I'd say, look, Carla, we're both trying to do the same thing. Why don't we arrange to meet once a week and just for an hour and we can meet on Zoom. And at the beginning of it, I'll say, what do you want to work on today with your book Carla? And you'll say, oh, well I need to do the outline for chapter 1. And I'll say, brilliant, okay. And you'll say, what are you going to work on Faye? And I'll say, oh, I want to work on a pitch to a publisher. So we'll go, great, okay, let's do that.

Fay Wallis [00:33:53]:
And we have to mute ourselves. So our cameras are still on, we can both see each other and then that's all we can do for the next hour. And then at the end of the hour, we'll unmute ourselves and I'll say, how did you get on Carla? And you'll say, oh yeah, it was great. I, you know, got through it. And you'll say, how did you get on Faye? And I'll say, oh, it was really good. I didn't check my emails. I just, or I didn't get distracted. I've actually done it.

Fay Wallis [00:34:15]:
Hooray. Because there's all this weird evidence that show that some people really thrive on accountability. And I am definitely one of those people. And so the fact that I'm expecting you to hold me accountable, the fact you're going to check-in with me, there's no way I'm going to say to you, oh yeah, I didn't do any of that actually, because it feels like I'm letting you down in some way. Actually doing that has really helped me with emails because there's just no way I'm going to let my co working person down and start getting distracted. And so I think the reason I'm bringing this up is it's very easy to hear advice from someone or read advice in a book and think, it makes logical sense. What's wrong with me? Why can't I stick to doing that? And then you can start really beating yourself up and being unkind to yourself and start thinking, oh God, you know, I'm supposed to figure all this stuff out by now. So my advice really is actually take a step further back from that and try to get to know yourself and figure out what, what is going to work for you.

Fay Wallis [00:35:16]:
If you're someone like me who needs that accountability, how can you hold yourself accountable? So it may be that you think, oh, I don't need these co working blocks you're talking about Faye, but I do need accountability and other ways to stick to just checking my emails twice a day. Well, that might be done in a different way. Perhaps you hold your team, you know, you ask them to hold you accountable to it. Perhaps you introduce it as a team wide thing, where we say, okay, on this day, we are going to all make sure we don't check emails, we don't send emails, we get, you know, we're going to all be kind to each other. And another way of being kind to each other and thinking about your team actually, while I'm on this point, is thinking about how your behavior impacts them. So let's say you give yourself one of those co working sessions and that is to catch up with emails and it's at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. What you don't want to have happen is your poor team then suddenly just get bombarded with emails from you at 4 o'clock. That means they're going to feel they have to reply and then they're going to have to stay late.

Fay Wallis [00:36:16]:
And so it's, it's really thinking these things through on a slightly deeper level. And that's where I love the scheduling function now for emails. And, I think pretty much all of the email providers, like you mentioned, you don't use Outlook, Carla, but I think most of them now do offer schedule send. And I know it's something that you use Carla, so you don't end up sending emails at late times or in the middle of the night. They all appear at a lovely, reasonable time for the person who, is on the other end of it.

Carla Miller [00:36:45]:
I do. I try. And then I feel really bad if I'm doing stuff at night and I just press send, and I'm like, oh, no. I meant to schedule send. And, it's now arrived at 8 o'clock at night in their inbox. But as a general rule, I really do. My poor, to Karen in my team, luckily, I know that she sometimes starts work at 6. Like, she's obviously an early bird and likes getting on with stuff.

Carla Miller [00:37:09]:
So I schedule stuff at 8 in the morning, basically. But sometimes she must wake up and go, oh, there's 5 emails from Carla. Luckily, it brings her great joy to solve my problems and deal with my admin stuff. So so, hopefully, I'm gonna have a great start to the day. But, yeah, your your team members may not appreciate arriving at work to, a whole host of emails. So, yeah, I try and break them up a bit for other people so that they're not arriving in their inbox at 8 o'clock. Fantastic. So some brilliant practical tips there.

Carla Miller [00:37:41]:
Is there any last tip that you would like to share before we bring this, interview to a close?

Fay Wallis [00:37:48]:
I think the last tip is about thinking about using your out of office message. Again, something that I don't know why, but I will feel hard to put into practice. So some people are brilliant at this, which is the minute they finish work, switch on the out of office and it says, you know, I'm out of the office for the evening. I'll reply to you as soon as I'm back, or they go on holiday and say, I'm going to be away for 2 weeks. You know, this is the person to go to while I'm gone or don't expect a reply, I'll come back to you when I'm back. And I'm terrible at doing that because I think, oh, but if I've just got a spare 5 minutes after I've made sure the kids are in bed, I could just quickly check my emails because if there was anything really important and then I could reply to it, or if I'm on holiday, I'll think, oh, well, you know, maybe just when I first wake up, I might have time to check emails. And then what happens is you can't switch off, which is where that overwhelming feeling comes from because the email's constantly on your mind. Because then if I don't check them, I'll think, oh no, what if something came in because I didn't put an out of office on and I haven't checked it and, you know, you can just end up in this crazy spiral really.

Fay Wallis [00:39:01]:
And I had it the last time, not the last time I went on holiday, the time before, I thought I won't put an ounce of office on because, you know, just in case I've got time. And then when I got on holiday, it was just so nice and I switched off and relaxed except for at like 2 in the morning, I'd wake up thinking, I I didn't look at my emails and I haven't got an out of office. And what if someone emailed me and they're thinking why hasn't they got back to me? So it's just such a simple thing, which is put the out of office on if you're not gonna be there. Or also think of having other kinds of auto replies as well. So when you said, Carla, about, oh, I got all these podcast pictures, you could potentially put on an automatic reply. So any emails that come in from outside of your organization get a reply saying, you know, I'm training today or I'm recording the podcast today or I'm this, that, or other today. If your query is urgent, please go to my PA or if you're interested in being a guest on the show, I'm afraid we don't accept cold pictures. Thank you for your interest, you know, but we won't be replying to you.

Fay Wallis [00:40:04]:
And then you know that that's happened. So it's, with all of these things, it's thinking about communicating. So how can you communicate in a way that's going to help everyone else, but it's also going to help you switch off. So you're not worrying about stuff because it's that worrying that can cause the overwhelm. Again, if you're going to only check your email twice a day, which I know a lot of people can really worry about because they think what if something really urgent comes in? Well, that's fine. Just set up auto replies that say, I check my emails twice a day at this time, if there's something urgent please call me, here's my phone number', and then you will find yourself finding it much easier to just let go of your inbox and stop it, you know, taking up so much of your mental head space.

Carla Miller [00:40:46]:
I think that's great. And it's about expectation management, isn't it, for other people? Because then you're not imagining, oh, there's people out there with these huge expectations on me to reply because you've set their expectations proactively to start with. I always do it for holiday. The other thing I always do on holiday is I will, on my phone, turn off the work email accounts. Now it doesn't mean I don't sometimes go, oh, I've got 5 minutes to spare. I'll just turn it on. But it means that they're not arriving and by default, and I'm not looking at my phone and seeing that there is unread messages because I am unable to, resist the draw of unread messages. We're addicted to incoming information, aren't we? I also turn linked I also removed the LinkedIn app from my phone, so that stops me wasting time doing that on holiday and getting involved in that sort of stuff on holiday.

Carla Miller [00:41:42]:
I was talking to someone recently who has a very ruthless approach when they come back from holiday, which is they just delete everything in their inbox. And they basically think, well, if it was really important, someone's gonna come back to me. And I think maybe you could do that if you're super senior and you just get ridiculous amounts of email, and you're like, do you know what? People really will come back to me. But I really I like the idea, but I don't think I'd quite have the courage to do that one. Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for sharing those practical tips. I'm sure there's at least one thing that everybody can do to feel like they've got a little bit more of a sense of control over their email. I'm also going to when we finished doing our chat, I'm gonna read a little bit out from the 4000 weeks book about email and what we're trying to achieve with email because I think it's it's a different perspective, but I think it is a refreshing one, like you said, and he says it far better than I can.

Carla Miller [00:42:37]:
So I'm gonna do that separately. But thank you so much, Faye. Now if people want to find out more about you or engage with you further, where should we send them?

Fay Wallis [00:42:45]:
My web site is bright sky career coaching or otherwise I am on LinkedIn. I should probably take your advice Carla and, take the app off my phone when I'm on holiday because I absolutely can't resist checking it where I'm on there quite a lot. So it's always lovely to hear from people whether that's through the website or on LinkedIn And I'm on there as myself, which is Faye Wallis, and that's Faye without an e on the end, and Wallis is with an I s on the end instead of an a c e.

Carla Miller [00:43:13]:
Brilliant. Thanks very much, Faye, and everyone else, good luck managing your emails.

Fay Wallis [00:43:18]:
Thank you so much, Carla. It's been wonderful to be back.

Carla Miller [00:43:24]:
So I hope you enjoyed that episode with Faye. Now, if your overwhelm is not restricted to email, if you're generally feeling like it's hard to lead without overwhelm and you want to feel more supported, encouraged, do you want someone to help you solve some of your work issues and upskill, then you should think about joining Women Leading, my community for women leaders, helping them to lead without overwhelm. Head on over to carlamillatraining.comforward/womenleading to find out more, or drop me a message on LinkedIn, and we can have a chat about it. Now I promised you a bit of a quote from my favorite book at the moment. So it's called 4000 weeks, time management for mortals. It's written by Oliver Burkeman. And I have listened to him be interviewed on various podcasts and thought, wow, brilliant guest, loads of insight. I bet it's probably not worth getting the book because I've probably heard it all in the podcasts.

Carla Miller [00:44:21]:
And then I bought the book and I listened to it on Audible, which I don't normally do because I really love spoken word. However, it was really good and it kept me going through a 5 and a half hour journey to the Wye Valley last weekend where I went kayaking, which was lovely. Anyway, he talks a lot about email. And so I wanted to read you this because it really made me think differently about how much effort I'm willing to put into managing that email inbox. Apologies for the slightly croaky voice. I have a cold. Okay. So he says, getting better at processing your emails is like getting faster and faster at climbing up an infinitely tall ladder.

Carla Miller [00:45:07]:
You'll feel more rushed, but no matter how quickly you go, you'll never reach the top. In ancient Greek myth, the gods punish king Sisyphus for his arrogance by sentencing him to push an enormous boulder up a hill, only to see it roll back down again, an action he is condemned to repeat for all eternity. In the contemporary version, he would empty his inbox, lean back, take a deep breath before hearing the familiar ping that says, you have new messages. It gets worse though because here the goal post shifting effect kicks in. Every time you reply to an email, there's a good chance of provoking a reply to that email, which itself may require another reply, and so on and so on until the heat death of the universe. At the same time, you'll become known as someone who responds promptly to email, so more people will consider it worth their while to message you to begin with. By contrast, negligent email as frequently find that forgetting to reply ends up saving them time. People find alternative solutions to the problems they were nagging you to solve, or the looming crisis they were emailing about never materializes.

Carla Miller [00:46:19]:
So it's not simply that you never get through your email, it's that the process of getting through your email actually generates more email. The general principle in operation is one you might call the trap. Rendering yourself more efficient either by implementing various productivity techniques, or by driving yourself harder won't generally result in the feeling of having enough time. Because all else being equal, the demands will increase to offset any benefits. Far from getting things done, you'll be creating new things to do, and other people will be sending you new things to do. So that really made me think. And that the whole book has really made me think, actually, because it's all about how this desire to create a sense of control, to feel on top of things by clearing the decks, by doing everything superly super efficiently actually creates more stress in us because we're setting ourselves up for an impossible task, but not recognizing that it's an impossible task. So maybe inbox 0 isn't the ultimate goal.

Carla Miller [00:47:36]:
Maybe the ultimate goal is to get through the work that you can get through, prioritize effectively, and be okay with what you're not able to get done because it was impossible to get all of it done in the first place. So I'm gonna leave you with that thought. I'll be honest. I am still very much pondering that thought myself and its implications in real life, but it seems to me like there's a lot of wisdom in there. Hope you enjoyed the episode. We'll be back soon with more practical tips to help you lead without overwhelm.