Your inbox is probably killing your mornings

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How sales leaders maintain control of their day by strategically ignoring their inbox.

This week, we’re breaking down four pillars of a successful morning routine for sales teams. Today, we’re diving into a topic that will validate some, enrage others, and assuredly spark some conversation around the (digital) water cooler Monday morning: why you should never start your day in your inbox.

The research is clear: Email is killing productivity.

It doesn’t take much more than Google search to find a growing deluge of articles, videos, podcasts—even peer-reviewed research papers—decrying email as leading detriment to productivity, camaraderie, even individual employee wellbeing.

Forbes: How Email Made You Less Productive
Inc.: Why Your Inbox Is Your Enemy
IT Pro: Email is killing productivity, new research finds
Structural: 3 Reasons Internal Email Is Hurting Your Team's Productivity
hppy: How Banning Email Can Boost Productivity And Work Satisfaction

Suffice it say, experts agree that email is often a productivity blackhole, but what can we about it? If you’re like the far majority of loan officers, email is the primary form for your company’s internal communication and perhaps second only to your phone for external communication.

Bottomline: Like most loan officers, you probably aren’t in a position to buck email altogether—but that doesn’t mean you can’t approach your inbox strategically and change the way you communicate to aid productivity, rather than undermine it.

Our recommendations for putting email in it’s rightful place:

Never start your morning responding to emails
Leverage other tools to communicate efficiently
Change the way you manage your inbox

No sales leader starts their day responding to emails.

Throughout the week, we’ve referenced a list of morning routines shared by sales leaders our team compiled to uncover the essential components of an effective morning routine.

One thing we noticed about every routine we found is that none of them started with email. Not one.

In fact, only one even mentioned it—and that was a sales leader who personally emails recent clients to ask about their experience and to identify opportunities for improvement before the day really got underway.

Needless to say, if no sales leader starts their day in their inbox, neither should you. And for good reason! All you’re like going to find in your inbox are problems—which, while needing to be dealt with at some point, will always derail your day if you dive into them first thing.

Don’t be lured in to reacting your inbox. Start your day proactively attacking your most-important Must do’s.

There are more ways to communicate than just email. A lot more.

Recognizing that compliant communication isn’t the same for every originator, I’d hazard a bet that most loan officers are either not utilizing or underutilizing several forms of communication available to them and/or their team. And that’s a shame.

We’re familiar with the big three: in-person meetings, phone calls and voicemails, and—of course—email; but what about messaging, videoconferencing, video messaging, systems notifications, push notifications, and social media (to name a few)?

Taking the time to think through the communications you send to your average customer, colleague, or partner and assigning each to the optimum channel available to you can illuminate new, more-efficient, and possibly even more-engaging ways to share information than just another email.

Clearing that little red icon is costing you more time than you probably know.

Researchers have found on average:

…it will take you 64 seconds to return to work after checking your email. That equals to hours of lost productivity per day.

Ouch… now, while that stings to read, it’’s important to note that surveys of managers and executives show that very few business leaders think eliminating email altogether is a “good idea.”

Which leaves one option: (likely) changing the way we use email. Now, maybe your one of the smart ones who’s already answering emails in scheduled blocks, sending automatic replies throughout the day, and leveraging tools like automation, privatization, and foldering to minimize the time needed to reach that coveted “inbox zero.”

Or maybe you’re like the rest of us and respond to emails as soon as they come in, losing untold amounts of productivity in lost time and resigning yourself to feeling perpetually behind.

Well… in that case, the first step toward freedom is recognizing you have a problem, and then disabling email notifications for select windows throughout the day to focus on the work that really matters.

Easier said than done, but worry not! We’ll have plenty more installments on managing email effectively in the very near future.