67. Effective Email Management for Busy Physicians (Part 1)

Do you ever feel you are drowning in your emails? Perhaps you have hundreds or thousands of unread emails and never seem to get on top of it?

In this episode of the Academic Revolution Podcast we discuss the importance of effective email management for busy physicians and physician scientists.Dr. Inga Hofmann provides detailed strategies for managing an overflowing email inbox, starting with a cleanup phase where unnecessary emails are removed, followed by a maintenance phase that helps you stay on top of your emails efficiently. 

A cluttered inbox can hamper productivity and the goal is to develop a habit of managing emails effectively. Inga shares 6 specific strategies you can implement immediately to stay on top of your emails once and for all. 

00:00 Introduction: The Email Management Problem
01:22 The Importance of Email Management for Physicians
02:50 The Three Categories of Email Management
03:42 The CEO Analogy: Why Email Management Matters
04:43 Strategies for Effective Email Management
08:25 The Cleanup Phase: Decluttering Your Inbox
15:41 The Maintenance Phase: Keeping Your Inbox Organized
16:25 Tips for Long-Term Email Management
25:04 The Role of Technical Tools in Email Management

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Transcript

0:00

If you're a busy physician, you probably have hundreds. If not thousands of unread emails in your inbox, am I right? And chances are, you're probably at risk of missing something important that just slips through the cracks. In order to get on top of your email inbox, we'll finally tackle this problem. So stay tuned for after the music and intro and we'll be right back. Well, welcome back to another episode of the academic revolution podcast. I'm so excited to be here with you to talk about effective email management and strategies for busy academic physicians and for physician scientists. And this is straight from pillar. Number one performance habits, because this is all about. Getting in the habit of managing your email effectively so that you don't spend hours of unnecessary time on. Looking for staff feeling bad about the thousands of emails that you never read that are just staring at your inbox every day. And probably if you're listening to this, you have experienced this problem. And I actually want to also thank the people in the Facebook group that have inspired this topic. I am proud of a bunch of Facebook groups for physicians. For academic physicians for all physician moms. And it turns out. Email is such an important topic that a lot of people are struggling with. What am I going to do with this overwhelming amount of email? In my inbox? Well, this is what we're going to talk about today. So, thank you. Facebook group friends for. Posting this question because it reminded me. Wow, that's such an important topic. That I don't think I have talked about in detail and it's a great way to start the new year and tackle this problem. Right from the start. So, why don't want to talk about today is really how do we manage our inbox? I have. Put this topic into basically three categories. There's a cleanup face where you want to get just on top of the email inbox that is out of control, then the maintenance phase of how do I maintain if I cleaned up and then number three, some. Strategies of good email hygiene in terms of how to actually craft responses. This will be a part two, this third topic on how to. We respond to emails and manage them effectively in another separate podcast, because I want to make this short and sweet. And keep the nuggets. Bite-size so that you can take action. So we'll talk about how to respond in the next podcast episode. So he is the thing when you are. Spending a lot of time on email. It is a bit like his CEO that has risen to the rains and the top of the food chain in a company. And that CEO is now back in the mail room, sorting letters and mail. You would think that is ridiculous, right? Let's say you're the CEO of, I dunno, a Coca-Cola or a name, your favorite will company. And suddenly you're back in the mail room, sorting mail. Well, of course you will think that is ridiculous because that person has something better to do. And probably has people help him manage the mail. Right. And the same is true for you. You shouldn't be as a busy academic physician with multiple roles to play spending the majority of your time on your email inbox, because that is literally analogous to you being in the mail room, sorting mail. So I will share some strategies that I have found very helpful over the years. That are implemented to get on top of my email. No. Of course they can say, you know what? I have thousands of emails. I don't really care and I just live with it and that's fine, if that is you and it doesn't cost you any stress and to still be able to stay on top of things. Despite that email clutter. That's okay. That works for some people. But chances are you're listening to this episode. He feel like, oh, my email inbox is so daunting and I want to get a handle on it. Because it just feels so overwhelming to stare at the sheer amount of emails that are having even to read and worry about that. I'm missing something important. Perhaps you have even missed important things because it has gotten so out of control. And honestly, we have all been there. Definitely. I have been there. That's why. I started implementing some strategies to help me with that. Now these strategies that I'm going to share with you will work, whether you have an admin or you don't, if you have an admin that's helping you with email management. Well, my power to you, that is awesome. I know that most people as academic physicians do not have that luxury. Unless they are well advanced in their careers. I know department chairs and division chiefs. Have admins that can help with that. And some utilize those admins for that specific purpose. Others rather manage their email by themselves. That's totally up to you, but I want to make sure that you understand all this can be done by you. And if you have more help, well, more power to you. That's awesome. He has a foundation of principle though. And this is why this is a topic of performance habits. Because success in your academic career, in your physician career. Lice totally on your daily agenda, meaning what you do daily. The daily habits you have is a huge part of your success. So now at the start of the year, it's a great time to kind of regroup and say, you know what? I want to get on top of this email issue this year, and I'm going to build daily habits around this particular issue. So that I will overcome it and it won't be hanging over my shoulder anymore in this new year. And that's wonderful. You know, when I think about email management, I think it's a bit like decluttering a house. I don't know about you, but I have kids even as they've gotten older, it seems that my house is constantly a mess and there needs to be decluttering done. And email management is very much analogous. To de-cluttering and house, when you first get started and your house is a bloody mess, what is the first thing you want to do? You want to kind of do a full sweep and a deep declutter set up, get rid of a lot of trash in recyclables and things you can donate, and then you need to have a maintenance strategy to keep the house clutter free. Your email is just the same way. So in today's session, we're going to talk about the clean up face and how to clean up your email sort of inborn false Rupe. And then in the second part of today's episode, we're going to talk a little bit about maintenance strategies. And then, as I mentioned in the next episode, we are going to talk about things that you can do to continue to manage your email mail, moving forward in particular, how to respond. To emails. When things are live or more time consuming. Let's dive into the clean up phase. If you have a pen and paper, I suggest you take some notes. Otherwise, he can always listen to the replay later. So for the clean up phase I would suggest number one, schedule a few cleanup sessions, just like you would with de-cluttering your house to say. Maybe. For once or a couple appointments this week or next week, doesn't matter. Pick a couple of time slots. You can keep them brief. 15, 20, 30 minutes no longer, please. Where you say I'm going to walk on cleaning up my email inbox and put those on the calendar to decide when you're going to do them, put them on your calendar and just make sure. You do that activity. Now, one simple tip I have for you. This is a bit of mindless work. It doesn't need much brain power. So perhaps don't use your top brain power hour when you function the most. And the best to write your research papers or manuscripts and those kinds of things. Perhaps don't use that precious time to plea out to your email box. This can be done easily as little increments, during times when you're perhaps not at your peak performance. That's just an extra tip for me. So schedule that time. In smaller chunks. And you will be amazed how quickly you can clear out your email box with this strategy. And then once you have scheduled. There are two basic approaches. Number born. Is an approach that some people take, they delete everything based on the age of an email and they say, you know what? This is a complete disaster. I'm just going to delete everything that is six months or older. And I don't even look at that. I don't even look what's in those emails. And I'm just going to delete it. And typically a Microsoft and other email providers that your hospital has, or your personal email has tools to do that with really a couple of clicks. Now some people do that. And they don't worry about if they deleted something that was important because they say, well, you know what? People will come back to me. And that is probably true. Now if you're like me and you are a little bit more hesitant to do that. I totally get you. I'm a little bit more of a cautious person. And I take a different approach. And basically say I'm going to clean up everything. Irrespective of its age now. And use a system to do that. And he is what I found helpful. When I decided to declare my email, I go and sort my entire inbox. Based on. Sender. So sort emails based on sender, not on date that makes it a lot more manageable. I have found and gives you a good overview. So now it will sort everything in alphabetical order. And it gives you a couple of good pieces of information. Number one, it shows you immediately how many emails you get from whom. And chances are the emails that you get a lot. Either from your favorite medical society, probably from your own program, from the university and such. With just newsletters in general information. And then what I would do. I. Go through in alphabetical order. And I would just boot any, literally delete on block as a bulk action. Everything from that sender, either by highlighting and scrolling down and hit delete, or you might have an automatic function where you could just delete from that particular sender. With a few clicks. It depends on your email software. And you can decide probably for most centers that you don't even need to look at the email. You could just delete it. It feels so satisfying seeing your number. Of unread email. Quickly decrease. So that's one way to do it in. I found that a very effective way. And then you will also see there. They are emails from individuals, from people that you had communication with. Let's say collaborators, people in your program, colleagues, et cetera. They probably kind of the one off email then actually has some meaning and value you might want to have a quick glance. Is this still valid around all that old stuff? Most of it, he can probably delete. I found this really helpful to number one, give me a quick sense of who is sending me, what and how often. And number two. To not feel like I'm deleting something that might be valuable if it just go in, instead of going in and deleting everything on blocks, so to speak. That is six month old. Obviously they're blowby if you have an email system and most providers It meaning email provide us now function this way. That they automatically have clutter and junk mail boxes. I don't even look at those. I usually just delete the whole thing. You can even set up automations that those inboxes get deleted every. So often. Once a week or so. Now be careful I had had happen that the university and some things that came from my program were hiding and it. Colada box. Yeah. In a junk mail folder, specifically student evaluation, probably because the platform that they use was flagged as junk. And so I never got them. In my direct unfiltered inbox, so to speak. So make sure that there aren't things that you have routinely missed. Usually we know about that. Go ahead and Dem. Clean up once you completed the cleanup phase, and this might not take you that long. I mean, I've done this with thousands of emails in my inbox. And really did it sort of in a couple of evening sessions. Do it, when, again, whenever you feel like it's an easy brainless work for you to do. And it will feel very rewarding, like a clean house after your decluttered. Oh, one more note on this one for the ones you want to keep the emails. So you might discover a theme or you want to think through if theme for yourself that is helpful to now create some email folders and drag those things that you want to keep. Into those email folders. Now here's a word of caution. I know we all use. Our email. As kind of a folder and a saving system for information. When really it shouldn't. I've made this mistake. I would say I still do that very often. I look at my email back at some information. And really it is not an information keeping place, unless you must keep that communication and probably want to make a copy of that information. Is that important? But if there's information in there, you should probably have that information somewhere else. And not just in your email, because we're going to spend so much time, then later looking for that one email that we know is somewhere. And our email inbox. And that can be very, time-consuming just looking for stuff. So I want you to be mindful, not to just stuff, everything in folders, because then you're just kind of moved the objects and you're still spending a lot of time swiftly through. Next is the maintenance phase. This is really the meat of keeping your inbox clean and maintained. Well, and I have a handful of tips. There's six tips up on a share. That will help you to manage your inbox in the longterm. Now managing your email inbox effectively is really crucial for maintaining productivity. Especially as a busy physician. And I think these six strategies will really help you to stay on top of your email inbox. After he have done this nice declutter, you want to really maintain it. So you don't have to do the declutter again in a few months. Because the amount of emails we get is humongous and most of it is junk. Tip number one, make sure you set very specific times when you're actually going to check your email. I think this is the most critical part. I've coached so many physicians, I've done so many trainings for academic physicians and what I still found that most of them. Almost all of them. Are attached to the email way too much and have no particular system when they're going to check emails. And seem like they're always stuck. On. The email and means you're looking at it, you're looking at responses and then you're responding and then it's a time sink and the important stuff actually didn't get done. In fact, when I run trainings like my digitalist. Boot camp, where we talk a lot about time management and productivity and people measure how much time they spent on email in an exercise that I do with them. It's shocking. It's usually often hours. Certainly many hours per week and often a couple of hours, two or three hours per day is not unusual. And that is time. Honestly, you don't have, you already know that you cannot afford to spend in the mail room. So please be very strict and disciplined to schedule specific times when you're checking your email. Put them on the calendar. And really stick to those. That's what people that really need to get ahold of you will for emergencies. You have a pager or phone, they have other ways to get ahold of you. Everything else can wait. I suggest, usually start with a couple of times a day that you check your email some point in the morning or by maybe noon-ish and then before you leave for the day and you can even train people that that's what you're doing. By putting an automatic response there and say, you're checking your inbox X amount of time. And you will get back to them in a certain amount of time. I was going to speak more about this in the next episode. So that's key. So make sure you designate times when you check and stay off it otherwise. Also just a pro tip or an extra tip here. Please do yourself a favor and to your productivity and your brain power and turn off this silly notifications on your phone and on your computer that pop up every time you get a new email, because that is constant interruption and will really destroy your productivity. And we, you don't need that because most of what you're getting throughout the day, the hundreds of emails you might be getting as junk. It just has no relevance. Number two. Use filters and folders. So filters are basically filters that automatically kind of categorize and sort emails based on certain criteria. It might be the sender or the subject or certain keywords. And then you can create automations for these filters. To send, certain emails from certain Sanders in a folder. And you'll have to try out what works for you. I cannot tell you he is what you should. Create the photos as such. You might have patient care and research, or you might have department emails, those type of things. You really have to try that out because everybody is so different. How they work, how their departments work. And you have to try out what works for you. So I don't have a strict guideline here. But think a little bit through it, brain, dump it out on a piece of paper, sketch it out and then set up these folders. So set up folders and then the filters are the automations. So you can, for example, set up an automation and say, whoa, I saw on my cleanup face that I get. Hundreds of emails from this particular sender, which is basically a bunch of junk. So then put that into either right in the junk email folder, you can designate that as junk. Or you can. Make sure it gets deleted immediately, or you can put it on a fodler sort of department in your spoil example. I don't read them in real time. Like that second, what I did as are often put them in kind of a department, you know, And then I reviewed them, maybe scan through them once a week to make sure I'm not missing something critical. Guess what if see it, they are something super critical chance to sell your division chief here. Department chair will email directly and not through a newsletter. So that is really helpful. Number three. Prioritize your emails have some sort of flag system. And again, the email provider has that. To label your email. So when you go through during the time, when you are checking email, this is what I usually did. I very heavy on the delete button and Jellied immediately about has no relevance, what I don't need to even open. And most of the time you can tell by the sender or by the previous nine. Then there are emails that are very quick. Very quick responses that you can just do them in real time because they just take a few seconds or minute of your time, just get those responses down with and be done with that. And then there are some emails that require a more detailed follow up. And we're going to talk about that in the next episode as well, but you might want to stop them and say, well, this one needs a little bit thought. I don't want to have a reactionary that responds. I need to put a little thought in that. And so you'll flag that and maybe come to it. Later in the day or the next day. And some of your emails will be pure to doors, for example, oh, your annual whatever safety training is up, but you have to do it by X. Then just put that immediately on the, a calendar. And block that time off for whatever long and then be done with that. So that is number three. Prioritize emails again, be very quick on the delete button. Just like you watch trash things that you're not neat and decluttering your house. Number four. Unsubscribe and manage subscriptions. If there are any newsletters you get Any updates you get on a regular basis. And you're like, what? I never read those. I don't care about those. They are not valuable to me then just unsubscribe from them. Oh, so quick pro tip. When you go to a scientific conference or meeting. You know how they, in the exhibit hall like to scan your batch and usually you get a bunch of pharmaceutical garbage from them that you never wanted. Make sure if there's an opt-out button. Opt out of the email. Not to be very honest. Plenty of emails, often meetings, and you'd usually see a spike because I still believe they must Either sell these emails, even they're telling you they don't, or somehow you end up on a lot of more emails even when you're opted out. But I do think it helps so up out of these emails when you register for a meeting, so that. The sponsors, exhibitors, et cetera. Don't hijack. Your email inbox. Number five. Delegate. As much as you can I mentioned this in the beginning, some of you will have administrative support and if you do great. I asked your administrative support, what they can do with your emails. What I did when we had new admins, I met with that person and say, how can you help me here? And it varies very much. By the admin by your department or division rules and how your program runs. If they can help you with email management or not. Now, as I mentioned in the beginning, many division chiefs and department chairs. Do utilize the admins to help them scan through emails. Some people don't feel comfortable with that. That's fine too. But if you never ask the question to the admin, you never will know the answer. Most people assume that is not an option. And you might be surprised that some admin say, yeah, I can do that for you. Or it can at least help you set up automations and forwarders. So that's what it came down to with my admin. Back when asked. She said, well, I cannot really manage your email. We are not supposed to do that. Because then I have to do it for everybody. That was not an option, but she said, I can help set up your automations and your folders. And that was helpful because that saved me some time. I sketched it out on the piece of paper. She set it up in my account. And then we could tweak it from there. So that can be helpful. And then number six is. Just want to give a minute to talk about technical tools. It staff and support. So, are there any tech towards. That's a question. Somebody asked in the Facebook group at the time. I have any tech tools that can help you with your emails. The answer is yes, there are some tools. Many years ago, something came out that actually used full bottle. That was pretty helpful. That's called. Sane box it's S a N E B O X. I have no affiliation. I honestly don't use it anymore. And I couldn't really tell you why. I just figured out other ways. But it sort of helped, especially when automations and email providers were less robust to clear out Clara from your email immediately based on a few clicks. So this might be something you can check out. Now he has a walk of caution. Most of your email will now have a technical tools and support that you can just utilize. And the other part, you really have to be aware of working for a university, typical that they are, is a lot of rules and regulations, what you can or cannot use in terms of technical support towards, so you really. I suggest check with your it department. They might have some resources. They might even train you on some stuff that you just don't know, because if you feel like you're not tech savvy, that can be really helpful. You could go ahead and install some stuff. And then ask for forgiveness later. I've wouldn't recommend that people have gotten in trouble by that. And I know it's really frustrating. There are so many amazing technical tools that you can use to save your time. That businesses and industry is used all the time. But unfortunately, our universities are always like a decade behind the regular people. It has spit frustrating, but they can also just then block those things. I remember there were times when I wasn't allowed to use zoom during the pandemic Gulf. FICO that because they were so sold on using another system, I couldn't even have zoom calls and have zoom set up for my business, for my coaching business. And I use it all the time. So they blocked me literal phone, having some, some other meetings that are just wanting to use soon for. So that was frustrating. So you might want to just check in with them. So I think that's it for today. One quick bonus tip. Miba asked me all the time. Now what about using email on my phone? Most of us have email on our phone. He asked my quake story and caution both that. Yes, you can use your email on your phone very quickly and easily. And I used to have work email on my phone and he has what happened to me. Initially I thought this is so efficient. I'm just going to read and scan through the emails. As I walk between buildings and wait for the elevator or go and wait in a meeting. I will just go in my email inbox. And manage my email during, you know, a downtime or multitasking during meetings. Speedy, bad idea. And. What happened to me is more than once I might inadvertently accidentally delete something. That was actually important or worse. I have formulated responses where I thought it is a quick response where either had talked about typos and they are. Or because of the small screen and how we process things differently on the go. I didn't read the email that carefully and had. Not the best or most appropriate for response pet them costs. And bunch of to-do later, this happened to me more than once. And a couple of times that was really a bad situation. So I was like, I'm never going to do that again. That was purely because I managed things from the phone with my mind, not fully focused. Then managing them on a dedicated email time. So I got rid of my email from my phone other than the personal email, and I'm not managing that on anymore. So that just frees up some sanity because otherwise you're literally stuck on that stupid thing all the time. That's my pro tip. Remember effective email management is an ongoing process. Just like decluttering your house. Try some of those strategies. I was see what's working. You don't have to do them all at once. Try something. But definitely I would say start with a big declutter and then go from there. Now, let me know what worked for you. You can email me suggestions, tips at Inga at halfman.com one F two ends. Or you can go to my Facebook. Paige at Ingar Hoffman. Men MD. And, and share your tips. they are, or if you have ideas for new topics, Next time. We're going to talk about handling email responses more effectively, so you can spend less time in your inbox. So that will be the next episode. I also want to let you know, before you have off about a special training I'm doing on January 26. It is a new year. And then new year, what I always do with usually my personal one-on-one coaching clients is I do something called a vision retreat where we cost a bigger version. I will take you through a specific process to cost a vision for the new year. And then cost division for the bigger life, like for long-term vision, then chunk it down to basically a specific goals for this year, and then chunk them down in quarterly, monthly, and weekly goals. And I take you through a very specific process. That then we'll show you. Okay. Now I know what to do for this quarter. And then we're going to go through a process that will make it very clear what you have to do even the following week. That's Friday, January 26, if you're interested. Just check the show notes that these other notes that are below the podcast episode, and I have a link there for you to registered. It is a pay to win. So there's a ticket price. We're going to be together probably for three hours. But the people that have done this over the years with say they rave that's one of the most. Favorite things to do that gave them the biggest bang for their buck. To really set their selves up for success. And people have gotten grants and manuscripts done out the door that way. And it's been amazing to see the progress that people have made through this specific process. So join me there. You're more than welcome. And talk to him soon on the next episode.