PM FAQ series: How do you deal with the onslaught of emails as a Product Manager?

Handling distractions is a key skill as a PM. PMs, for one reason or another, are in high demand. They are considered decision makers, provide direction, align in goals, and can escalate gridlocks if they happen. This means that a lot of roles would like input from PMs often, to ensure their work and ideas are useful, generate impact, and are aligned with the goals of the team and organization.

Consequentially, as a PM, you will need to manage your time more carefully than maybe in other roles.

One way that is a sure path to disaster is to not have a strategy for managing your inbox. Over the years of my career I have found a few approaches from colleagues, and also developed a system which I am using. Implementing the system has helped me tremendously in managing my time and attention, to not burn out or spend time on unimportant tasks.

Zero inbox strategy

This is a strategy which might or might not work for you, but i practice is since a couple.of years and found it useful. This strategy relies on a set of feature of your email client, and since I only use Gmail, i can’t comment on other clients abilities and features.

At the core, zero inbox means that there are literally no emails left in your inbox at any point post your email processing slot. This sounds like crazy talk? Might be. The main ways I achieve this are:

• I groom my inbox at fixed time during the day, taking 3 passes at it.
  
• The first pass deletes spam and non-relevant threads. These are emails I am not currently concerned with at all, or which are outright spam emails.
  
• The second pass archives threads which don’t need my input or involvement. Archiving means they are removed from my inbox but remain searchable. When the relevant person who’s response the thread is waiting for replies, the thread will reappear in my inbox.
  
• The third pass is a deep analysis of threads which do require my input and for which I will need to reply. Once replied the thread is either closed, or waiting for response. In either case it can be archived.

This doesn’t always happen in this binary way, one often the second pass takes longer than I want because to establish that something can be archived without my input might also take time. Also, i have some email threads which are critical, and I want them in my inbox for rapid access. So I accept that zero for me means somewhere below 20 emails. I am cool with that.

Applying smart filters to my email

Filtering is a key option to ensure your inbox isn’t clogged up with random emails. When working with Google docs and Gmail, every doc comment is triggering an email (or email digest). This means, there will be lots of automated emails just from collaborating in many docs at the same time.

As a PM, you will also find yourself creating a lot of docs and asking the x-functional team to contribute. All which will increase the noise in your inbox. Some of these emails can (and probably should) be auto-archived. This way you are only receiving messages when your name is added to a comment or a comment is assigned to you.

Also, emails from automated processes which aren’t relevant to you can be filtered normally. As a PM you might be added to a ticket system from engineering, and that might spin off a ton of messages that aren’t immediately relevant to you. In my day to day, i rely on my eng team and program managers to alert me to urgent input needed on tickets, and I only screen tickets sparingly. This is because the rate of relevancy in this category of messages is low, compared to the absolute volume. My inbox would become unmanageable if I let these messages in unfiltered, but I’d only be providing valuable I put a handful of times a quarter.

Managing the times I answer to email

I have recently read the book ‘Deep Work’ by Cal Newport, and I pledged to apply its principles. It makes the point that we often engage in what Cal calls ‘shallow work’, and that we neglect deep work, and that shallow work can undermine our ability to ‘go deep’. Over time, and possibly with age, I found that this is true. Distractions erode my ability to deeply concentrate for prolonged periods of time. Since my mid thirties I decided to take this matter more into my own hands, and to be more intentional about when I do shallow work.

One consequence was to develop a more rigorous schedule during my day, where I avoid getting carried away by the seemingly endless volume of emails. Then I made slots where I am ok to do so, and dive into my inbox with full force. This has helped me to avoid the experience many of us have with social media these days, where before we know it we spent hours on them when we just wanted to check one post. I also deleted social media apps from my phone, since using the web experience is less engaging and hence I am less likely to get carried away for hours on end.

Tracking what I work on

One ‘hack’ which I found incredibly effective is time tracking. Using an app like Hubstaff allows me to track minute by minute what I spend time on. This by itself it a good thing, but one aspect I love even more is that the tracking makes me more loyal to the task at hand. When before I might have interrupted my task for something shallow, the tracking serves as a subtle but noticeable barrier for me to stay on task for longer. It is as if I find myself incentivized to do better due to exposing the time explicitly through the tracking. It makes it harder to tell my self the fairy tale that I had done some solid work, when in fact I got distracted every 10 minutes.

Augmenting emails with real time conversation

Emails are a great tool, and they are still my favorite way to communicate, but they have one characteristic to be aware of: they are slow and asynchronous. So if you don’t need an answer soon, or timezones prevent this in the first place, emails are great. However, if the opposite is true, emails might be a tough route. Of course, you can (and should) add a desired or expected turnaround time to your email requests. However, considering sending a more urgent request though chat can help. Chat apps have seen a rise recently, first and foremost Slack, which has been become a synonyme for direct and fast collaboration in a professional context.

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