I’m one of the few people who actually like and prefer email. Because it is an open standard there are is a whole ecosystem of tools to help with managing it as opposed to be locked into a single vendor’s default experience.

The thing I’ve noticed with people who HATE email is they try and treat email as though it’s an app like Slack and they let themselves be constantly interrupted and respond to things as they come in.

My system is pretty simple. I have specific times during the day where I check email. Otherwise it’s closed. When I check, I look to see if it can be deleted/archived, is it actionable, does it need to be dealt with now or later. I NEVER respond to emails while triaging. All I’m doing is clearing the inbox and determine how things should be filtered. I also look for opportunities to create rules to auto sort a particular type of email.

The email gets put into to my task manager and I respond when I make it to that task on the list. I may set the priority depending on urgency but my goal is to treat responding to email like any other work task and not some special thing that trumps all other work. I think this is where people slip up. Someone sending me an email does not make them more important than the other tasks that I may be working on.