The Snowball Effect: Communication Techniques to Make You Unstoppable

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When you want to empty your inbox

Cluttered inboxes are a drain on your time, your focus and your will to live.

And, as you’ve just seen, when quite a few of your emails are called “FYI”, it’s even worse.

It’s imperative you learn how to unclutter them. The McKinsey study I referred to in this section’s introduction found that people spend 28% of their week reading/answering emails. That’s over 500 hours per year. Or, if you have a 30-year career, that’s eight years of it!

The good news is, there are only three possible causes of having a full inbox, in that you have emails you’ve:

1. Never opened; and/or

2. Opened more than once – “It’s not urgent. I’ll deal with it later”; and/or

3. Opened, dealt with and left there.

This means there are only three ...