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The Best Automation is Never Having To Do The Thing
I recently went to a website to purchase some stickers to decorate the cover of my iPad. I made a purchase and received an order notification by email.
The next day, I got another email from the vendor with a sale ad. The same day, I got a second email from this vendor with a different ad. And on, and on, and on.
I unsubscribed from their emails within a couple of days so that I didn’t have to endlessly delete emails I didn’t want. I did get my stickers in the mail and they were great. I may even order from the company again. But, ugh…the automated emails when you purchase from a vendor are awful.
This made me think about how the best automation is never having to do something — like deleting emails you never wanted in the first place. Unsubscribing is simple in that case and is one of mail’s best built in automation tools. But, how else can you automate your inbox. That takes some thinking which can lead to some great automation ideas.
What causes my inbox to get out of control?
Through automation and developing practices around having a place for everything, I can keep my inbox clean. When I’m at my best, I’ll look at my inbox no more than 3 times a day (morning, midday, and end of day) and move emails to their places. I can do the majority of my email triage from any device as well. I don’t have to be sitting at my desktop or on my laptop to do the work. This means wherever client business takes me, I can keep things organized.
My inbox gets back out of control for three reasons:
Reason 1: I don’t build in those actual check times
If I try to check email on the fly, I don’t actually process email. I may answer something quick and get a dopamine hit from getting something done, but I actually need to focus on email triage for 10–20 minutes about three times a day to keep my inbox clean and properly move things to where they can be dealt with appropriately. The other two reasons, ultimately, are variations on this reason.
