MANAGEMENT
WORKLOAD MANAGEMENT
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
T
he 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’!
20
February 2023
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.