Tackling Email Anxiety in a Productivity-Driven World [15 Tips]

Are you overloaded with the sheer volume of new emails arriving in your inbox each day?

Do you feel like you must reply ASAP?

You’re playing a constant game of catch-up, worrying you might miss something important if you don’t immediately read that email you’ve just received.

Are you checking your inbox beyond working hours, blurring the boundaries between professional and personal life?

Staying on top of emails requires you to constantly switch between tasks, struggling to engage in thoughtful, creative work?

Are you feeling stressed out, burnt out, anxious, less satisfied with your job, and performing less efficiently?

We know how you feel. Managing email can often be overwhelming in our fast-paced, digitally connected world. The constant influx of messages and the pressure to respond promptly can disrupt our productivity and mental well-being.

Luckily, there are steps you can take to tackle the issue of email anxiety and piles of emails waiting in your mailbox — 15 steps, actually.

Without further ado, here is what to do to alleviate email-related stress and anxiety and enhance your overall job productivity and satisfaction in the process.

15 Proven strategies to reduce email-related stress

Learn 15 practical strategies for managing email anxiety, boosting productivity, and achieving a better work-life balance in the digital world:

1. Organize your inbox with folders and filters

We all know how quickly our inboxes can get cluttered if we don’t organize them diligently. Luckily, that’s what folders, labels, or categories are here for. You can use special email filters and rules to sort the emails based on, for example, the project, keywords in the mail body or subject line, the sender, or the emails’ importance.

This way, emails are sorted even before you’ve seen them, decluttering your inbox and allowing you to focus more easily on what’s most important. And the chance of accidentally missing important mail is significantly lowered.

Keep in mind, however, that you should strike a balance between automation and oversight. Check the inbox and other folders yourself occasionally to be sure nothing has been misfiled. Keep it simple, too; many rules can be counterproductive and cause confusion.

2. Schedule email checking times

If you can, allow yourself to be on alert for incoming emails only sometimes. To achieve this, set specific times during the day for this task. For instance, you can check your inbox in the morning, after lunch, and once before the end of your workday.

Set this schedule so that you don’t need to reply to mail during your peak productivity hours, and consistently stick to it so that you set a routine both for yourself and your correspondents.

With this strategy, you can reduce stress and make it easier to focus on various tasks without interrupting your workflow. Of course, for this to work, unless you’re expecting an important message, you’ll need to quickly reply to it — turn off those irritating email notifications.

3. Unsubscribe from unnecessary emails

Whether you want it or not, your inbox is likely cluttered with newsletters or various promotional emails; most likely, you’re not interested in most of it. So, take the time to review and unsubscribe from such sources of mail junk regularly.

And to declutter your inbox even further, regularly delete or archive other mail you won’t need any time soon.

4. Use the email snooze feature

The email snooze feature is valuable in increasing productivity and reducing stress. Basically, emails that you’ve received and then snoozed will later reappear at the top of your inbox at the scheduled time, reminding you it’s time to reply.

With this feature, you can concentrate on answering urgent emails first and leave the less urgent ones for later. This could be an email that requires a long or thoughtful response, one that needs another task associated with it to be completed first (for example, a project report), or one that you want to send at a specific time.

5. Keep messages clear and concise

Like you can get fed up with an overbearing inbox, so can your correspondents. Therefore, keep your messages clear and concise to allow the readers to quickly grasp your email and reduce the chance of misunderstandings and unnecessary follow-up emails.

Keeping the messages a few sentences long—if possible—will save you significant time. And such conciseness, by the way, is also part of the proper email etiquette.

6. Opt for direct communication over emails

Depending on the topic at hand, direct communication, whether it’s face-to-face or via a phone or video call, can often be more effective than written communication.

This includes complex and sensitive topics where immediate feedback, clarification, and a more precise conveyance of tone and emotion are needed. Moreover, switching to a real-time conversation can help clear up issues if the exchange is potentially leading to misunderstandings or even conflicts.

Direct communication is often preferable if you need to make quick decisions as it eliminates the necessity for written back-and-forth that drags out the decision-making process.

7. Judicious use of read receipts

Read receipts can be helpful, but they can also be a factor contributing to increasing anxiety. They foster an environment where the sender expects immediate responses, leading to pressure for both parties, especially during busy periods.

Read receipts can make you dependent on immediate acknowledgment. But they can also be seen as an invasion of the recipient’s privacy or an undue monitoring of their email habits.

The solution is to use read receipts sparingly — only for emails containing information that is urgent or has significant consequences if missed, such as legal notices, critical project updates, or urgent requests.

8. Implement the two-minute rule for quick responses

David Allen’s influential productivity method called Getting Things Done (GTD) introduced the so-called two-minute rule. It applies to a wide range of small tasks, including answering some emails.

As the name implies, if an email can be answered in two minutes or less (including reading the message and writing the response) — do it right away. The rationale behind this rule is that reviewing a task and postponing it later is more time-consuming than if you’ve done it right away.

And this way, you won’t allow such small emails to accumulate and become a source of anxiety.

Source: Andrea Piacquadio, Pexels.

9. Set clear boundaries and response times

You must set clear boundaries to reduce email-related stress and, generally, in life. Thus, your colleagues and clients will know your availability and expected response times.

For instance, you probably don’t want to reply to business messages during your personal time. Also, you may set the standard of reply times, whether it’s within, for example, 4, 8, or 24 hours, reducing the pressure to respond immediately.

10. Team-based email management

If you’re working in a team, there’s usually no need for all email responsibilities to be placed on a single person’s shoulders. You can use a group address instead, reduce the volume of mail each individual must handle, and have the most appropriate person reply depending on the email subject matter.

This approach will reduce team members’ anxiety, ensure backup if a team member is unavailable, and allow junior team members to learn from observing how more experienced colleagues handle email communication.

Just make sure that all team members are trained on how to use shared email systems and that they understand the protocols for responding to messages.

11. Leverage email automation and scheduling Tools

Assistance from other tools, whether those built into the email client or otherwise, will help you optimize your process more efficiently.

You may write messages when it is convenient for you and then schedule them to be sent at an adequate or appropriate time, like writing an email in the evening and scheduling for it to be sent during work hours. Or, if you are out of the office for a while (like on vacation), you may use this function to schedule important mail and ensure continuity in communication. Scheduling Tools are software platforms built to help employees manage their working hours.

Auto-responders are also handy, as they allow you to inform people when you are out of the office, on vacation, or otherwise unavailable and direct them to alternative contacts who can assist them in your absence.

You can also save nerves by using a subject line generator to help you write engaging and compelling subject lines and get those emails out there faster.

12. Use email templates for efficiency

Do you regularly send answers to frequently asked questions, standard updates to clients, acknowledgments of receipt, or other kinds of standard emails? Then email templates are just the thing for you! With templates, you’ll be able to save time, eliminate errors that arise due to composing messages under time pressure, and generally lower your anxiety.

Remember that even when sending emails created from templates, you should still maintain a level of personalization. So, after creating a structure of the message, including a greeting, main body, and closure, leave placeholders for personalization: the recipient’s name, specific details of their inquiry, or a line that shows you’ve paid attention to their individual situation. This is especially important with customer service emails, where each situation you deal with might be unique.

Many email clients allow you to save templates within the application for quick use. Alternatively, you can keep a document with all your templates for painless copying and pasting.

13. Mindfulness practices for email management

Some methods of alleviating email stress are less practical and more psychological. For instance, practicing mindfulness—being fully aware in the present moment—when reading and replying to mail will significantly increase efficacy. This means focusing solely on the task and not multitasking.

Before starting your email session, take a few minutes to practice mindful breathing. Concentrate on your breath, inhaling and exhaling slowly. This helps center your mind, reduce anxiety, and prepare you for focused work.

Taking breaks, even short ones, is essential. Use them to step away from your computer, stretch, practice deep breathing, or engage in another relaxing activity that will reset your stress level and help you maintain a calm state of mind.

14. Create a relaxing email management environment

Handling your email management in a relaxing business environment will help you reduce anxiety and set positive associations over time. For starters, the physical environment can significantly impact your mindset, so choose a comfortable and preferably quiet place to check emails. For instance, this could be a cozy corner in your office or a spot with a pleasant view.

To create those relaxing associations and positive vibes, play some calming music, nature sounds, or white noise in the background, which will also help improve your concentration. Make a cup of tea, coffee, or whatever your favorite beverage is, enjoy it while dealing with emails, and watch your stress level drop.

Source: Vlada Karpovich, Pexels.

15. Choose alternatives over email for effective communication

Oftentimes, email is not the best tool for communicating with your customer base. Using an online community platform such as Mighty Networks will allow you to receive feedback more efficiently, foster mutual interaction between customers, increase their level of engagement, scale customer support, post real-time updates and announcements, and reduce email overload.

And if you haven’t done so already, strongly consider using a team communication tool such as Slack for within-team communication.

The benefits of using such a tool are manifold: real-time communication, channels, and threads dedicated to specific topics, and more file-sharing options with the option for team members to post comments within the platform for everyone to see and reply to. Also, features like polls, emoticons, and informal chat rooms can enhance team engagement and foster a more relaxed and communicative team culture.

Using it in conjunction with Paymo will prove helpful in assigning and monitoring tasks, communicating in real time, setting priorities, and keeping an eye on your team’s work through graphs, charts, and the resource calendar. And you can even connect it with your email to receive relevant project updates in-app.

Conclusion 

In conclusion, these 15 strategies are essential for handling email correspondence while remaining efficient and productive.

The trick is not to work harder but smarter. By using approaches such as designated email checking times, efficient inbox organization, mindful communication practices, and the use of helpful tools, there’s no doubt you’ll significantly reduce the stress associated with email management. Good luck, and keep that inbox decluttered.