Recently, at a conference, I was invited to fit in a piece of a giant jigsaw with one thing that I felt would make the world of work better. I pondered for a while (I’m a philosopher, after all) and then settled on

“FEWER EMAILS!”

I’m at the age where I remember emails being invented, becoming a thing, and becoming the thing. My early experiences of emails were very intermittent: I didn’t have a computer at home (and wouldn’t be able to afford this for many, many years to come). I remember heading to the library to be able to use that precious 30 minutes of free computer and email use and then later, when I went to university, having an organisational email address for the first time, as well as a personal one.

And here’s the thing: I don’t remember anything about the volume or nature of the organisational emails I received during that time. Okay, it was twenty years ago, but we’re talking four years’ worth of email communications here, presumably in some way related to the subjects I had chosen to study, and, nothing at all stands out about these. I can only assume that emails to and from this account were occasional, relevant and routine in nature – similar to letters, I suppose.

In contrast, I vividly remember personal emails from this time, excitedly recounting the minutiae of my days and weeks to friends scattered around the country at other institutions. I definitely remember looking forward to sending and receiving these emails, from the computer room in the bowels of my neighbouring halls of residence block, mainly.

Later, throughout my twenties, in my first jobs in my career, emails became more of a daily part of life. But I still don’t remember having a ton of emails, or in the main, getting many irrelevant or unnecessary ones. (I should add that my memory isn’t so bad that I’m creating a fictional, halcyon past).

During my thirties, I started to become aware of the creeping nature of “copy all” emails and/or their pesky chum “status emails”. You know their ilk – everyone in a group or team or even organisation is initially, or repeatedly, copied into an email, although if you analysed each message in the chain, you’d surely find people who didn’t need to be included. Or emails where the sender’s actual, probably unimportant message, is occluded by dropping in  something about their important job title or thing of note they’ve done recently.

At some point in my later thirties, emails became what I term “beyond default” and primarily pestilent in nature. On a “good” day now (in my early forties), I “only” get around a hundred emails, which I’m supposed to seamlessly incorporate into my day, regardless of what else I have on.

And, to be perfectly frank, I’m fed up of this! Yes, I utilise the various tips and tricks for managing emails, whether that be unsubscribing from mails I don’t want and/or didn’t choose to sign up to in the first place, in the hope that I can actually discern what emails I ought to read more easily (although I don’t seem to be getting fewer emails and am sceptical that unsubscribe, or even block sender, actually works). I aim to have just 2 or 3 dedicated times of the day where I read or send emails, which helps protect concentration for working on projects, but crucially doesn’t tackle the fact that the 30 minute slot assigned at say 1pm, might not even be long enough to compose or respond to more than a couple of detailed topics, or undertake a sift of the dozens of mails that have come inbound since the previous check.

Usually, in this blog or in any of Make Me a Plan’s coaching, I’d be introducing pro tips, plans here on how to address this. But, as I said on the exhibition stand at the conference, emails have become a bit of self-fulfilling prophesy, mails for mails’ sake, mails rather than conversations, mails to evidence working/turning up.

I’m not sure a single plan can eat the beast here, but as a first pitch to reduce my own email Armageddon, I’m going to trial a two-pronged approach: firstly, I’m going to use the phone rather than email on at least 2 occasions a day, and secondly, I’m going to limit my emails to a couple of sentences.

I’ll keep you posted how I get on and I’d love to hear from you if you try this or have other techniques.

Next fortnight I’ll be writing On Social Media, in the final missive of the current series linking to MMAP’s ScreenFree philosophy. Be social and show up to read this edition and please get in touch with any particular aspects of this subject you’d like me to write about.

In the meantime,

Happy Planning

PS If you want some other free tips for your business life, check out the Working Well blog – out fortnightly on Wednesdays, courtesy of Make Me A Plan’s Productivity Expert, Penny Le Kelly. Browse the latest edition here:

https://www.makemeaplan.com/news/international-womens-day-2025-what-it-means-for-uk-businesses/