Productivity Tip: Email

Edmond Lau
2 min readDec 15, 2022

Try this productivity tip out on Friday this week.

Photo by Justin Morgan on Unsplash

This Friday, before you are about the shutdown from work for the day, try the following:

  • Archive emails that you have read or responded to.
  • Snooze emails to Monday 8 am that you may need to follow up on Monday. I.e. high-priority emails or those that you have not responded to yet.
  • Snooze emails to Wednesday 8 am that you may need to follow up by the end of next week. I.e. medium/low priority emails or messages.
  • Delete the rest.

Go through every mailbox and do the same thing covering all work and personal emails. And you do this every Friday (or the last day of your work week.) It is important to have zero messages in your personal email, not just your work email.

The goal is zero messages in all your inboxes before the weekend. You will find yourselves less distracted over weekends, and when you pull up your phone, you will feel less obligated to re-read emails or respond to work. And if you can turn off audio notifications, go for it!

If you are a product or software engineering leader facing challenges to becoming an effective leader, I can help! I am a fractional CTO, startup advisor, and coach at Mossa Labs. Reach out to me for an online discovery meeting! I provide leadership coaching to senior leaders.

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