Welcome to the Inbox Overhaul! I'm Justin Baeder and in this program it's my goal to help you go from overload and overwhelm to a complete inbox overhaul so that you feel in control of email and you're able to use it effectively as a leadership tool. 

Far too many people are feeling like email just does not work for them. As a leadership tool, it is just dysfunctional for so many people and in this program, we're going to talk about why some of the common approaches— extremely common techniques and tactics that people use to manage their email— simply don't work. So if any of these sound familiar, then you are in the right place. I find that many leaders are checking email constantly all throughout the day and yet feel like they're falling farther and farther behind as new emails come in faster than they can be processed. And we feel this pressure as leaders to reply instantly to be supportive to get back to people in a timely manner but it creates this sense that email is just endless and that it's hopeless to keep up with it. 

Along with that, I see a tendency for people to just allow emails to stick around—to sit there in their inbox until the work is done as some sort of reminder, right? As some sort of physical clutter in the inbox to create a reminder of work that needs to get done. And that might work a little bit, you know, it works to have two emails in your inbox as a reminder of something you need to do. But it doesn't work to have 2,000 or 5,000 or 10,000 but I'm finding that that's extremely common among people in leadership positions due to an issue that we'll tackle early on in the Inbox Overhaul called asymmetry.

 So we're going to talk about how to break through that clutter, how to deal with the huge volume of email that you get and not have to set aside some huge block of time to get it all organized and to get it all cleaned up—but really to develop new philosophies and systems and habits that will allow you to get current and stay current with your email. So if you feel like you are just overwhelmed and you're constantly dealing with email and never catching up, just know that that is normal but that there is a better way. And that's what we're here to talk about. I find that the number one cause of people feeling overwhelmed with email is this false belief—this mistaken idea—that in order for an email to go out of your inbox it needs to be completely dealt with.

 So many people feel like they can't get rid of an email—they can't remove it from their inbox—until it's totally finished, completely handled and then and only then can it disappear from the inbox. And if that is an approach that you're taking currently and it's working for you, great. I'm going to guess that such an approach is not working for you. If you're in this program, you are probably looking for ways to improve your effectiveness with email. So if you're ready for a better system you are in the right place and let's get started. Here is what we are going to talk about in the inbox overhaul. First of all, we'll talk about some specific concerns for leaders. I'm going to assume that you're in some sort of leadership position and that's why email is such a challenge for you. We'll talk about some of the inherent properties of email and some of the design features that go back all the way to the 1970s that really inform how we can and should use email effectively. We'll talk about the core practice of getting current and staying current and clearing out your inbox every single day which, believe it or not, is a possibility and is what I'm going to recommend that you do. And I'm going to show you how in this program we'll talk about your smartphone—your mobile device—and how to use that in conjunction with your laptop or desktop computer to effectively handle email. 

And then we'll talk about a technique that most people don't know about that that really is central to staying on top of email called timeshifting—how to get an email into your inbox at the right time and get it out of your inbox when it doesn't need to really be there and in order to do that we'll talk about some additional tools that can be part of your repertoire so that it's not just email that's allowing you to stay organized and keep track of everything, but you're using the right tool for the right job. So with that let's get started!