Managing your mailbox

Swamped by your email inbox? LAURA WILLIAMS, school leadership coach, trainer and SBL podcast host, shares some helpful advice on how you can manage those neverending emails in a more effective way

The odds are, if you’re reading this, you received an email from EdExec to let you know that their latest issue has been published, along with a clickable link to bring you right here. This is good because it means you’re taking a break from the chaos that is swirling around you right now to read this – hopefully with the door shut and a cup of tea!

However, I reckon that, at the start of your day today, reading the latest issue of EdExec was probably not on your to-do list - and yet you’ve found yourself doing it anyway!

THE LIFE OF A SBL SUMMED UP RIGHT THERE. Not that reading EdExec isn’t a good use of time (because it definitely is!) but rather because it’s so easy to find ourselves doing things that we never planned to do or, even worse, doing things we shouldn’t really be doing at all.

The biggest culprit for this? The SBL inbox.

*Cue hissing and spitting sounds at the Outlook icon and red notification bubble!

Emails are a big part of school life and, broadly speaking, they are a force for good but, for an SBL, they have the potential to send us into a tailspin as fast as when we hear the words ‘unfunded’ or ‘broken boiler’!

Perpetual Waiting

Leaving the window open, the notification sound on and glancing, almost subconsciously, at the screen every three minutes serves not only as a distraction from other work but also as a gateway to countless more distractions that can (and do!) land throughout the day.

Working out of your inbox is a brain-taxing and busy job but, productivity-wise, it kills off your plans, steals your focus and works your anxiety up like crazy. It’s like you’re in a perpetual state of ‘waiting’, constantly on alert for the next drama to deal with, and revert to our default setting with the email window open… taking a breath and gathering our thoughts and then, guess what, another ping and we’re off again!

It does feel strangely satisfying to tie off a loose end, to achieve something tangible, to see the number of ‘unreads’ reduce - or at least not grow (!) - but, in reality, all we’ve really done is allow other people to dictate our work agenda without even realising it.

Sure, they haven’t waltzed in the doorway and dumped a bunch of to-dos on your desk while demanding that you drop what you’re doing - but they may as well have done! You have to triage and gatekeep your inbox, and manage it robustly without allowing it to manage you.

Your inbox is not your job.

It’s a part of it, certainly, but it’s not all of it

HERE ARE SOME IDEAS TO HELP YOU:

1

Shut down the window and silence/hide all notification alerts

Seriously, if there was a fire somebody would come and tell you – they wouldn’t email you – and, if something does come in that’s urgent, you’ll find that the person who sent it will follow-up with a visit to your office or a phone call to see if you’ve read it!

2

Check your emails at a time, and for a length of time, that works for you

Block yourself some inbox slots in your calendar so you can review what’s come in; reply to what you need to, delete what you don’t need and add any actions to your to-do list – try first thing in the morning, around lunchtime and as the last task you do before you go home.

Set yourself a time limit, say 15-20 minutes per block, to complete this task. This will stop you from falling down the rabbit hole of random to-dos and other people’s emergencies.

3

4 Keep your to-do list separate from your inbox

Sure, there will be things that you need to refer to in your inbox and you may have a very colourful flagging system to help you keep track of everything, but your inbox is not your only workload source.

Bring your to-dos from your inbox, your team, your head, external deadlines etc. together in one place (whatever works for you!) and prioritise them as a whole - which will help you keep an eye on the bigger picture and make sure things don’t get missed or delayed by less urgent tasks.

5

Checking your emails is different from replying to emails

It may be that you need to spend some time drafting a complex email, or pulling together some information, or crafting a politically-worded response to someone – these are separate tasks from checking your emails, as outlined above. Add this kind of task (ie. anything quicker than a simple answer or acknowledgement) to your to-do list and revisit as outlined below.

Use your calendar as your priority tool, not your inbox or your to-do list

We love making lists. We’re good at it – epic, in fact – but making a list is only the first task in the productivity chain. We then have to prioritise the list and the best way I’ve found of doing that is through my calendar – it helps me keep to deadlines and break tasks down into smaller jobs that can be scheduled ahead of time to help keep me on track.

Time-block to create focused time, group types of tasks to suit mindset/time of day, for example, writing tasks in the morning, bitty jobs in the afternoon, collate emails/useful docs within your calendar so you don’t need to hunt for what you need and you’re ready to start work instead of getting lost in your files.

When people are emailing you fast and furious, it can be difficult to remember that your inbox is not your job. It’s a part of it, certainly, but it’s not all of it. 

‘If you don’t like change, you’ll like irrelevance even less.’

So goes a quote I read several years ago which became one of those screenshots that I keep on my phone. Brutal, but true - and as school business management continues its inexorable curve of seemingly getting ever harder, it’s also ever more important that we can find creative ways of approaching the challenges in front of us.

We talk a lot at Keystone about embracing the ‘art of the possible’; it’s not just a glib marketing slogan but a key cultural attitude.

It’s a shortcut for focusing the mind on looking at what can be achieved, not just the easy or common route. It means going beyond how things are done now and pushing towards what is possible - exploring and questioning how things can, and should, be better. It helps the schools and trusts we work with develop a clear sense of their aspirations and develops an ethos of going beyond in the way they think about how they manage their schools and trusts to provide better outcomes for pupils.

It’s a powerful approach. So, what does this really mean in practice, and how can we practice creative thinking in roles in schools.

Two Schools Of Thought

There are two schools of thought (no pun intended) about creativity; both have their merits; which one works for you?

Schumpeter puts forward a theory of creative, destruction. Simply put, significant progress occurs when we do something differently and this is likely to mean that something we currently do has to stop. You can’t make an omelette without first breaking some eggs. Right? Often, we get concerned about protecting the status quo, and this can significantly limit the creative thinking we can do.

Children entering reception this year will still be in classrooms in 2036 if they stay on to age 18. A lot will change in 13 years, and you can bet the last pennies in your tight budgets that the way we teach in 2036 will be significantly different to how it is in 2023. Therefore, don’t we owe it to the children to be thinking creatively about what needs to change and start engaging in that process now?

The other model is known as the Austrian model, but it has pretty much zero to do with the country in the way it’s practiced. This theory talks about ‘iterative development’, consciously putting a focus on continual improvement. It requires a mindset of recognising that nothing is quite the finished article, and we can always build on what we have.

Too often, we set out on a project with an end point in mind - this model of creative thinking recognises the journey, and that the horizon moves as you get closer to it. This gives you a broader perspective of your position in the grand timeline of your school and what may come down the road.

I’ve personally found tools such as fishbone diagrams really useful for understanding the core issue of a problem - this opens the possibilities of true creative thinking and then allows you to explore the art of the possible.

They start with the problem you’re trying to solve - this could be something like ‘our payroll process isn’t efficient’ and this is the problem that goes at the ‘head’ of the fish skeleton diagram. Draw a spine horizontally and then six or so ‘bones’ going off at angles. Give each of these the title of a broad relevant area, such as ‘staff, software, regulation, budget, processes’. Along the bones of these areas, you can then list the reasons that contribute to your problem, and so on. 