Well, hello, everybody. Welcome to the Clinician Researcher Podcast. I'm your host, Toyosi
Onwuemene. What a pleasure it is to be talking with you today. Thank you so much for tuning
in. I'm excited about today's topic. I'm talking about mastering your email inbox.
Yes, that's mastering your email inbox. And I know that this is a topic that so many people
talk about, but I want to give you a fresh perspective on mastering your email inbox
that I think you're going to enjoy. And I'm going to share some insights about things
that have worked for me. And I hope that you will also do the same for me and share some
insights about what has worked for you. One of the things that I think is important to
note is that if you're in a master email inbox, you actually do need to be intentional
about email. And so this this episode is really to help you think intentionally and strategically
about how you use your email inbox to your advantage and remove any disadvantages that
your email inbox may have for you. Yes, I talked about being strategic and intentional
to use the advantages and disadvantages of your email inbox to your to your benefit.
So I want to first of all start by telling you that did you know that the average American
receives 120 emails a day? Oh, yes, 120 emails a day. That is a minimum of 10 emails per
hour. If you are considering a 12 day work week of many academics. And if you decided
that it is, you know, an eight day work week, and it very well could be for you. That's
about 30 to 40 emails, right? Is that is that? Right now I have to do the math because I'm
like, wait a minute, how much is 100? I don't I don't know. This is the wrong time for me
to be doing math. But that's a lot of email. That's a lot of email. So the average person
receives a lot of email, email messages day. And if you are just like, okay, I'm just going
to open my email inbox and just let the emails flow in. It's a lot of emails flowing in when
you're supposed to be doing deep work. Okay, so how do we think about our email inboxes?
So the first thing I want to share with you, the very first thing I want to share with
you is that it is important for you to recognize how you create value. This is important. This
is like the overarching thing that you really have to recognize about your, your your life,
right? Is how do you create value? How do you create value at work? Right? You work
for somebody or you may work for yourself. As a researcher, you work to build your research
program and they're their funders who pay you, right? So you have people who expect
something from you because of money they give you. And so for your employer, as a clinician,
they expect that you're going to do some clinical care, create value in the clinical space,
and they pay you for that clinical care. Or in your research program, you have funders
and maybe it's your institution that's funding you part of the way, or maybe it's the NIH
that's funding you, or maybe it's a foundation sponsor, or maybe it's an industry sponsor.
They have an expectation that, hey, we are remitting money to your institution on a regular
basis, we have an expectation for what you create. And so that's important for you to
recognize that in the space in which you work, there was a certain amount of value that's
expected. You may not think about it very much and you may just be like, well, I just
do my work, I get paid and you do. But let me tell you that if you stop creating in the
area for which your people say you have, you're creating value for them, for example, let's
say you don't see patients for a year, you will hear about it because somebody will say,
hey, hey, hey, I think this person's supposed to be creating value this way. And I don't
see, I don't see the receipts, I don't see the benefits. And so you'll hear about it.
But you do your work because you're an amazing physician, you work so hard. In fact, you
probably do more than you're supposed to. And you probably do a lot of things that don't
create value as much as you do things that create value. But it is important for you
to recognize how you create value. Maybe the shorthand for that is how do you make money?
And if it's through grants and funded sponsored projects, it's through creating value through
your research. And so you know that moving your research forward and communicating the
value of your research is how you create value. And partly for some of us and actually for
most of us, it may be more clinical than research. Creating value is what we do in taking care
of patients. More specifically, you make money when you see a patient in close chart that
generates a bill. And so those are the things that create value for your organization. So
it's really important to recognize that. That email is not the primary reason by I mean,
it's not the primary vehicle by which we create value. And you knew that I didn't have to
tell you that. But the reason it's important is to recognize that your email inbox is a
tool to support your value creation. I want to say that one more time. Your email inbox
is a tool to support value creation. It is a tool and it's got to support you. If for
whatever reason your email inbox becomes a competitor of your ability to create value,
or it's a detractor from your ability to create value, then it's no longer supporting you
and it becomes the enemy. But the email inbox is neutral. It is not, it's not out to get
you and it's not out to sabotage you, right? It's also not really out to help you either.
It's just neutral. It's just like, Hey, I'm just the space virtually where I collect these
signals that become emails in your inbox that you can read. I'm very neutral here. I just,
I'm just here. I exist whether you exist or not. And, and it's a neutral, it's a neutral
thing. So it's a tool. And how do we use this tool to our advantage? And I think the first
thing is to recognize how you create value. And because you recognize how you create value,
you put everything else in perspective. If this is the way I create value through my
scholarship, then everything else kind of takes a backseat to creating value through
my scholarship. So creating value through my scholarships, number one. And then if you
create value clinically, it's like, okay, well, creating value through taking care of
patients in the, in a way that I can see them and close a chart that generates a bill. That's
another way that you create value. Now, you may say that I'm kind of just, you know, boiling
it down to its, to its barest bones. And yes, you do a lot more than just see a patient
and bill. I recognize that. But what I'm saying is recognize that in everything you do, if
you take great care of patients and bills are not generated, it is a problem. And you
may not think it's a problem, but I want to, I want to invite you to try it for a month,
right? See patients don't generate a bill, close the chart. And I mean, you're not going
to do that. It's just built into what you do. Closing charts is built into what you
do. And when people are sending you emails and say, Hey, the charts not closed, it's
because they know closing the chart generates the bill. But anyway, I just want to help
you recognize and you already do, but it's important to say, this is the way I create
value at work. If I think about what are my highest priorities at work, then it's got
to be the value you create through your scholarship and the value you create through your clinical
work. Now I want to talk about the value create through education. Now, if you're in an academic
medical center, you teach, right? You, you have fellows in your clinic or you have residents,
you have med students, so you are creating value through education. But if nobody's paying
you to create that value, then education is going to be number three. If you're kind of
going to think about what are your top three things by which you create value. Now, maybe
you have administrative work as part of the value you create. Somebody pays you for a
named medical director role before a named administrative role. Then yes, it's got to
come in your top three. But, but I want you to recognize that if you're paid for it, then
it should be part of the things that you recognize as the value of creating for your organization.
If you're not paid for it, doesn't mean you're not creating value for your organization,
but your organization is telling you that they don't recognize that value you create.
And so if education is a big part of what you're doing, and it's so important to you,
and you feel like it really should be in the top three of your value creation, you even
think it should be number one, then I want to challenge you and I want to invite you
to talk to talk to your senior director or your division director, maybe your chair about
how it can actually be a named, named activity for which values created say, Hey, I'm going
to get money for this activity that I do. Right. And I think it's important. And if
you don't get money for it, I'm not saying it's not valuable. I'm just telling you that
your institution does not value it enough to give you money for it. And, and it's an
opportunity to create conversation around how do I, how do I get that? How do I, how
do I get it recognized that I'm doing this work? Anyway, all right, that feels like a
digression. But anyway, I wanted to say all that to say that when you recognize the value
you create, it helps you put your email inbox in perspective, and in using it as a tool
to support the value you create, but also not allowing it to distract you from creating
value. Okay, that's number one. Number two kind of flows from the first. And it's really
if you recognize the value you create, if you recognize that you are paid to, you know,
to, to move research forward, to answer important questions for your funders, then you recognize
that there are very few activities you do in your day to day, that actually move that
value creation process forward. If clinical care is one of the pieces of the value you
create, and that will depend now on your split, right, whether it's an 80 20 roll or 70 30,
whatever it is, 50 50, recognize that the 20% is really the activities you do that move
that value creation process forward. So for example, I do mostly research. And so, you
know, the funders are giving me money to create value through my research. And so my writing
is so important, right, doing the research, and writing about it or communicating my science,
whether that is through submitted manuscripts, or communicating to future funders, or communicating
to the scientific public about my work, that is value that I created my research program.
And so it becomes really important for me to prioritize that, how do I prioritize that,
it means I start the day with at least 30 minutes of writing, I usually do 90 minutes
as like a first start to my day, I'm like, I've done this 90 minutes, I've moved this
manuscript project forward, I've created that value already, right, the day starts
with value creation. And so that's mastering my my 20% in the value I create it through
my research. Okay, I also create value through my clinical care. For me, that's rounding
on the consult service, I finished the value creation of my research in the morning, and
then I go round on the consult service in the afternoon, I make sure we see patients
and I sign the notes, and I close the chart, to the extent to which you can close the chart
in the inpatient setting, you don't really close the chart, but you sign the note, and
then you bill, and then you've created value through your clinical work. Now, somebody
will call and say, hey, we have a multidisciplinary meeting coming up, and we want all the specialists
to be there. I will tell you that while that is very important and absolutely critical
to moving patient care forward, that multidisciplinary meeting, I will ask myself, do I need to
be there? Right? Is my presence there? Absolutely necessary? Or is there somebody else who can
represent me? Because I recognize that multidisciplinary meeting as a meeting that does not create
value for more organization from the perspective of patients seeing chart closed. Okay, now
I'm not trying to be reductionist about this, but I'm just letting you know how it shapes
the way I think about my 20% in each of these areas. Or somebody calls me and says, hey,
the prior authorization needs to be called in by a physician. I start to laugh actually,
because I'm like, oh, it does need to be called in, but not by me. Who can do this? Who can
do this for me? Because the time I spend on the phone, 20, 30, 40 minutes is not value
created for my organization. Now, is it value created for the patient? Absolutely. Somebody
needs to create that value, but it's not me. And the reason it's not me is because it's
not part of the things that are on my job description for which I am paid, right? It's
not. And I know this may be controversial, but I'm saying that if you are the one calling
all your prior authorizations, it is time to have a conversation with somebody who is
in charge of maybe your division or your department, because you have to understand that the things
for which you are not paid are things that the institution is explicitly saying to you
that they don't value. And if they value it, and they need to find a way to enhance or
to document that value by paying you for it. Okay, I feel like I'm going in a different
direction, but I just want to share that. So we haven't even gotten to email yet, right?
The reason we haven't gotten to email first is just to recognize that email is not number
one, and it's not number two. Number one is recognizing the value you create. Number two
is maximizing your 20%. So the reason that maximizing your 20% is important is because
before you ever get to your email inbox any day, create value first. Create value in the
things for which you are paid, period. Create value first. And the moment you've created
value, and whether that is that you've closed charts, or that you have taken care of your
research investment, then once you've created that value, then your email inbox can possibly
come to the fore, right? It's a tool for communication. It kind of is part of the value creation
process. It's not the most important piece of the value creation process. And so I'm
inviting you to recognize your value and create the value any given day, create value first,
and then go to your email inbox. Now, that moves us to number three. Inherent in what
I said in points one and two, right? Inherent in those two things is that your email inbox
is probably not a place you should be in first thing in the morning. Now, I want to just
put a caveat to that and say that I am in my email inbox sometimes, maybe at 7am. And
that's because honestly, by 7am, I've done, I've done, I'm going to say it, I'm going
to confess that I've done 90 minutes of writing by 7am. Yes, I get up early. I'm an early
riser. I'm a big morning person. I'm very huge morning person. So I wake up early and
I get writing done early in the morning before I start to run around and do things and chase
kids. I do that. And so sometimes at 7am, I am in the email inbox and I'm in my email
inbox because I've created value already. I'm like, I can be here now because I've created
value. So I'm not saying that you can't do email in the morning. There's no can't. There's
only just you making things work for you. But I am saying that until you've created value,
I think you should reconsider whether you should be in your email inbox or not. One
of the ways I get around this is that sometimes I'm doing email at the end of the day and
I will schedule emails for the morning. And I'm so glad that Outlook lets me do that.
That's my work email provider. You may have a different provider, but I'll schedule emails
to arrive in the morning. I'll sometimes clear up my inbox at the end of the day and scheduling
emails to arrive in the morning. So I feel like my morning email work has been done.
emails have been sent out in the morning. Great. Now I feel like I have I have at least
hours in the day before I ever have to go to my inbox because I'm waiting for those
responses. I know they're coming because I scheduled these emails to happen in the morning
and I'm going to come back to those responses probably midday as my first time to touch
email. Okay, so anyway, so I'm saying again, that you got to limit the space for your email.
This is point number three. And in limiting the space for your email, you are defining
when you go to your email inbox. Now for me, that's not like a specific time of day. Like
I only check my email at 11 and 12pm or something. I don't do that. I really do say until I've
done this work, I'm not looking my email inbox. And if there's you know, is a certain
email I'm expecting or I have a certain feeling about, you know, things that are in my inbox,
you know, sometimes they can be anxiety related to like, is there something important that
I'm missing that I'm not responding to? But yes, that anxiety, if it's present, I've
kind of worked against it, I no longer allow my email inbox to drive anxiety. But if that
anxiety is present, then it really drives the value creation process because it's like
I'm not checking email until I've created value, I'm not going to do it. And so if I
really am anxious to check my inbox, and I better be anxious to create value first, and
then I can check my inbox. And so that's that's how I want you to think about limiting the
space for your email is don't allow it to fill your day. And I know there are people
who have their email open and they're just responding all day. It's not efficient. You
have more time in your inbox than you really need to. And it's distracting as well. And
so yes, if you have one of those, you know, bells that ring when you know the Pavlov bell
that rings when your email inbox comes in, I want you to consider turning it off. In
fact, I want you to consider just closing your email inbox thing, just whatever your
provider is just close it for the day. Just don't don't open it until you're ready.
Make email a part of your business, right? It's like it's on my schedule. It's on my
list of things to do for the day. This is the time in which I address email. This is
really important. This is the time in which I address email. So don't let email just take
over your day and you're responding to email in the morning and then the afternoon and
then the evening and then the middle of the night. I know people do that. And I want to
bet you that you have mentors who do that. I want to bet that you have people that you
really respect who are just in the email inbox all day. But I want to invite you to think
about your email inbox is one of your activities for which you create space, you address and
you're done. Because you know what email will be there tomorrow. And one of the great things
about your email inbox is that any email that accumulates will wait for you. Like it's not
a disappearing messages thing. It will wait for you. It'll still be there. And maybe you're
like, no, I don't want I don't want anybody to send me an email and I'm not looking like
I'm responsive. Again, I want I want you to calm down if you're feeling that way. And
I, I sense the anxiety that's related to that. Sometimes there's this feeling like if you
don't respond, people think you're not working. Again, it's so important to clarify how do
you create value for your organization to so important. Because when you understand
how you create value, if anybody's like you didn't respond to my email within 20 minutes,
you need to have a conversation with that person if they're important enough in your
ecosystem to say, Hey, I just want to clarify how I create value for this organization.
And I want to understand how responding within 10 minutes of an email writing my inbox helps
me create that. Right? You need to have those conversations that there are people who are
yelling at you are upset at you in any way, because you're not that responsive. You do
need to have conversations with them about how you create value and what time is needed
to create the value that they respect, or the value for which you are paid. And so if
anybody has an expectation that you're going to respond to emails within 15 minutes as
evidence of productivity, I want you to think about that person. If they're valuable enough
in your ecosystem, have a conversation about your new strategy, and how you're going to
do things from now on so that you can create the value they most love the value that they
most appreciate. And if they say, Hey, that's not what I value. If you're an administration,
maybe that's what's valued. But the important thing is to clarify it, put it on your schedule
so you can limit its encroachment into your entire life. Okay, that's number three, limit
the space for email. Number four, when you do go into your inbox, prioritize the 20%
I'm big on this, this whole thing of like, what are you going to respond to that gives
you the maximum bang for your buck? Invariably in your email inbox is the you know, funny
cat video, somehow your name gone on that, that mailing list and you get the funny cat
video, you might get the Oh, here's what's happening on campus in the coming year. These
are great emails and please, who doesn't love a funny cat video and who doesn't love to
know what's happening on campus? When you go into your email inbox, these are not your
top 20%. They're not. And if you did number three, where you're limiting the space for
your email, you may have 30 minutes on your calendar to process email. So you want to
go to the email that's most important, scan your inbox and say, Oh, I got an email from
the editor of the journal about the journal that I submitted. That's kind of like a 20%
email. I would address that first. And okay, maybe there's an email inbox about you know,
a patient chart that you haven't closed. That's kind of like the 20% of your clinical. Okay,
I would address that. You know, so you know, I don't need to tell you but what I'm saying
is that don't just process your email from top to bottom. If you have time, okay, maybe
you do that. Sometimes I like to do that because I like to go from the beginning to the end.
But when I when I have a minimum amount of time and I recognize that's like, I'm not
going to be done with this in 30 minutes or 15 minutes, however many much time I, I have
allotted to the email on my schedule that day, I go through and I prioritize the 20%.
I get them answered and I get them done. If there's if it's an email that can be responded
to right away, I responded to it right away. If it's an email, it's going to take time
or I really need to think about the response. I will I will create a time for it on my calendar,
but more about that a little bit later. I want to I'm going to talk about that a little
bit later. But I do want to remind you, I'm talking about focusing on the 20% of your
email inbox, start with the things that are most important and knock them out. And then
if the time comes where it's like, oh, it's been 30 minutes and there's still 50 emails
left to process. You can feel confident you've addressed the most important and you can exit
your inbox for that time, knowing that you can come back later to address the things
that are not so important, but not so critical. Now should every email be responded to actually
that's that's an important question. Every email doesn't require response for the emails
that require response, you do want to respond, they may not be that critical. And so you
can take your time to respond. But definitely when it comes to your email inbox, when you
open it be very clear about the 20% and create that 20%. Okay, I mean, create that value
in your email inbox. Don't let don't don't treat every email the same, right? Don't say,
you know, I've got to respond to all 40 all 40 are equally important, you know, they're
not. And so prioritize the ones that are important. Okay, number five is to keep your responses
short. Okay, this is really important. It took me so many years to learn this. I just
want to just, you know, emphasize the importance of keeping email responses short. Now there
are some emails to which the responses cannot be short. That is the clue that it is not
an email, it should be a meeting. And somebody sends you an email, you're like, Oh, no, I've
got to make point number one, and then point number two, point number four, point number
five, point number eight, point number 20. Oh, it's like, okay, okay, clearly, maybe
it's not an email. Maybe this really should be a conversation. And if you if you recall,
many of these emails are emails that either you're so mad, you're so upset, there's emotion
behind an email that's 20, you know, 20 paragraphs long, there's real emotion there. You have
to recognize that if it's getting if it's getting long, that should be a conversation
happening, it should not be in the email inbox. So I want to encourage you to think if you
start to respond to an email, and you're you have three paragraphs, stop and say, should
this be an email or should this be a meeting? So my my encouragement to you and again, point
number five is keep responses short. So you know, email is a mode of communication, but
it's not the only mode of communication. Keep the responses short, hey, we're looking for
providers, we're going to take an extra day of call this week, because suddenly somebody's
not available to take call, say, yes, I'm available to do it on Friday at 10. On Friday,
I can do I can do call from, you know, 8am to noon. Or you say no, I do not have space
on my calendar to do this. Keep it short and sweet. Now, if you're writing, hey, I really
want to do this. But you know, Friday is like the only day that I have for my administrative
day. And I already have a meeting scheduled at my children's daycare. And then I have
the appointment with my eye doctor, not been able to create this eye doctor appointment
for so long. And then after that, I've scheduled time for like myself massage therapy, and
I don't want to really cancel it. I know the call needs to happen. But wow, too much information.
Oh, the email is getting too long. And who needs all that information anyway? Please
not do it. If that's what you do spend a lot of time explaining, please don't just say
yes, I can do it at this time or say no, I'm unavailable. No is a really short sentence.
People say you can just say, Oh, be done. I say, say no and say I'm not available or
you can say no, I wish I could say no. Add like a sentence to soften the blow of the
no and be done. Don't spend time explaining. Your job in life is not to explain yourself
to anybody. Because you know, to be honest, how many explanations do you believe anyway?
Really, you believe none of them. And if you really want an explanation, you pick up the
phone or you page someone and say, Hey, can I understand why you're not available? That's
great. Have a conversation outside your inbox, but your inbox is not really the place where
you explain yourself. Keep answers short and pithy and sweet. And again, I'm just talking
about the things that have worked for me. And I would love for you to share about the
things that work for you. But short emails are helpful because they help me recognize
if an email is becoming long, probably a conversation needs to happen. All right. Number six, create
rules for junk. Okay, create rules for junk. What does that mean? You get so much junk
coming into your email inbox. If you have been in your faculty position for more than
a year, wow, the number of things for which I don't even know how you get on those mailing
lists, but you clearly do. You get a lot of things that are junky. And to be honest, there's
like a list of emails you get that are kind of recurrent. And so create rules. I love
the outlook. And that's my email manager, you know, the rules for create for addressing
junk. And so I'll say, okay, sweep any message from this provider. And you know, it'll come
up like there's a sweep icon. And it says, and then I can, I can set the rule for how
to handle this email in the future. I'll say this email and future emails should go to
deleted items right away. This email and future items should go to newsletters because sometimes
I do appreciate the newsletters that come from my society. And once in a while, I don't
mind reading them. I just don't want them in my inbox. And so I'll create rules to send
them to my newsletter folder. Those are the two rules that I have for everything else.
You know, it's either going to go into deleted items right away. Sometimes I find that junk
at like addressing something as junk doesn't always work. And so I'm very clear about the
any emails from this email address should go to deleted items right away. And that helps
me it helps me declutter the number of things that come into my inbox so that at least most
of the things that are there are things that are important. Now, clearly a lot of things
pass through the filter. And so I'm very focused the day I have time for email. And I can do
more than just the 20% any email I see that I'm like, Oh, I don't want this in my inbox.
I think instead of just deleting it, I'm going to create a rule to make sure it permanently
doesn't come in again. And you'll find that that does decrease the bulk of the emails
that you have. And I recommend that. Okay, create rules for junk. That's number six.
Number seven is schedule anything that cannot be responded to immediately for everything
else respond and archive immediately. Okay, that's long. What I'm saying is that there
are some emails that are not just it's not just a yes or no response. They're asking
when can you meet for this important thing after which you've after which you've reviewed
the paper, right? Well, that's like three things. It's like, well, I need to tell you
when I'm available. So I need to check my calendar and check my schedule. I also need
to read this paper. Great after schedule time to read this paper. And, and then I need to
I need to respond to my availability. So the three things that need to happen, that's going
to take probably more than 10 minutes to respond to, right? I think those gosh, I think I've
heard the rule of twos, like if it takes you more than two minutes to handle this email,
then you should schedule it. And so schedule the email, put it on your calendar. And it's
important because there are a number of things that need to happen for this email to be responded
to. It's not just an email you can you can just address right away. So schedule it, put
it on your calendar. So the deadline for this response to the email, they tell you is March
15. Perfect. Put it on your calendar for March 14. And put it on your calendar, like actually
create an appointment for that email on your calendar. And think about it, I need 30 minutes
to review this article, make comments, and then clarify when I'm available to meet, put
it on your calendar for 30 minutes. The great thing about putting it on your calendar for
a day before the deadline is that deadlines force action. Like you could spend two hours
reading that calendar that that that article, you could spend two hours and you can spend
you can spend three days. But if it's due, then you're going to more likely compress
the time and say it's due, I need to do this right away. I do this honestly, for my grant
review. So when I have a grant review responsibilities, and they tell me that, oh, the grant deadline
is, you know, on Monday, October 9, yes, I will see how many grants do I need to review?
How long how, what's the reasonable expectation for how much time should be spent reviewing
these grants? And then I put them on the calendar for close to the deadline. And that means
I don't spend more time reviewing than I absolutely need to. It does mean sometimes I, you know,
sometimes you underestimate and then it's like, okay, great. Noted for next time, I
need more time. But deadlines force action. And so I use deadlines to my advantage. I
schedule any email that needs more time to be responded to, I schedule it close to the
deadline for the response. And if there's no deadline set in the email, I create my
own deadline. I say it's reasonable for me to respond to this email within the next 48
hours. Actually, most of these emails that need work, I will ever respond to them next
week, I'll put them on my calendar for the following week, and I'll do that. And it allows
me to set aside time for them. As soon as I've scheduled it and put it on the calendar,
I clear it from my inbox, I archive it. That means it's been addressed, or it's going
to be addressed in the future and no longer sits in my inbox. And I'll tell you one hack
that I do, and this is something I do probably about once a week is I'll go to inbox zero,
I absolutely will. I will set aside a time where I'm like, my goal is to process to inbox
zero. Now I've been doing this for a while. So I'm not processing 3000 emails to inbox
zero, I guess I did that a few years ago. But I do that now. I'm like, you know, it
may be Thursday, I'm like, I'm processing to inbox zero. And anything that is going
to take a little bit of time, I schedule in the future on my calendar, and then I archive
the email, and everything else that can be responded to, I respond right away, everything
else gets deleted, right? And so I'm able to do that. And it helps me because I feel
like, okay, I've done this, and now I have at least 24 hours before I really need to
look in the in the email inbox and see what needs to be done. All right, I've shared a
lot of things with you today, I'm going to just summarize everything. Number one, recognize
how you create value. Number two, master your 20%. And the three limit the space for email.
And before respond to the 20% first, and the five keep your responses short, or six, create
rules for junk. Number seven, schedule tasks that take a little bit more time and archive
everything so that as long as as soon as you scheduled it, it's archived. All right, those
are some of the ideas I have for managing email, I'm interested to hear how you manage
email. And I'd love for you to share about it. And I want to share that, you know, at
the end of the day, this really is about being strategic and intentional, you're the way
the strategies you use are not as important as the fact that you use strategies that you're
not just a passive consumer of email, that email somehow is taking over your life. All
right, I'm excited to talk to you today about the email inbox, you know, a mentee, you
know, a colleague, you know, a mentor, maybe, who needs to listen to this and share with
their networks. And I invite you to share this episode widely. Thank you so much for
listening today. It's been a pleasure to talk with you. I look forward to talking with you
again on the next episode of the clinician researcher podcast.