The smarter way to read email and messages
Readtime: 4 minutes
You get lots of email. And messages.
Reading them here, there, and everywhere.
Some you can’t stop thinking about until you’ve responded.
Some you forget to respond to.
Some keep you up at night.
You know there must be a better way to deal with them.
But what?
*** My Triple ‘R’ Method ***
It’s the smart way to read email and messages.
And get more time back for yourself.
Here’s how it works.
1. Open loops
Our brains have a natural desire to close open loops, leading us to think about them until they are closed.
You will notice that great storytellers use open loops. Because your brain wants to know what happens next.
It’s why you binge watch Netflix.
When you read an email or message and don’t respond straight away, your brain is occupied with an ‘open loop’.
Open loops create a cognitive burden because our brains naturally seek closure.
Your brain is partially occupied until the message is responded to and the loop is closed.
This means that your ability to focus on other things is reduced.
Each message adds to a cognitive load that reduces your overall efficiency. You may even feel it physically as a slightly fuzzy head and/or lightness in the chest.
2. Problem – late night back and forths
Reading emails and messages last thing at night is risky.
You may create an open loop causing an unwanted late-night back and forth to close it, when you were meant to be heading to bed.
Or you won’t close the open loop and find it harder to get to sleep.
Or it will wake you up in the night.
3. Problem – morning distraction
Similarly, reading emails and messages when you first wake up, but not responding to them, creates open loops.
You will be partially distracted by those emails and messages until you’ve responded to them.
And if you’re trying to use your first few hours to get through your most important work for the day, you don’t want to be distracted by new open loops.
4. Read when you’re Ready to Respond
You can solve these problems with my Triple ‘R’ Method.
Read when you’re Ready to Respond.
Only open your emails and messages when you’re able to respond to them.
This gives you the choice of replying straight away, or waiting until you’ve thought about it.
You don’t need to respond to everything there and then – and some replies will obviously benefit from a bit of thought first.
But the point is that you’ve got the option to respond. And responding means no new open loops.
If you’re reading when you’re not able to respond, then you have no option – and you’ve just created lots of open loops. This is a waste of your mental bandwidth, which is best saved for thinking about trickier replies.
It’s a deceptively simple approach, but the science works.
Also, when we do deal with the simpler stuff in the moment, it means we won’t forget to actually respond!
5. Read receipts
You are likely to feel more of a need to respond to an email or message with read receipts.
Knowing that you’ve been ‘seen’ creates more urgency to close the loop.
Pro Tip: Turn off read receipts – it makes the above much easier.
That’s it!
In summary
Congratulations, you now know a smarter way to read emails and messages.
Only read when you’re ready to respond.
That doesn’t mean you have to respond to all messages as soon as you’ve read them, as there will be some that will benefit from thinking about.
But the trick is to at least give yourself the option of being able to respond straight away to the easier messages. So that you don’t have unnecessary open loops taking up mental bandwidth which is better saved for the harder replies.
On a personal note
I’ve gradually changed my approach here.
Mornings – I used to read everything as soon as I got up on my phone, which frequently derailed my whole morning unnecessarily. Now, I normally only check email and messages when I’m at my desk – either a quick check for anything urgent, or after I’ve done my first most important task for the day.
Evenings – I typically have a cut-off of 8:30 PM for emails and messages. Turning off read receipts on WhatsApp has been a complete game changer for me. I highly suggest you do it.
During the day – I normally use my Triple ‘R’ Method. Most of the time that means I’m only going through emails and messages in bulk on my laptop. Obviously when I’m out and about it’s a little different, but I’ll primarily then just be checking for anything urgent. And then only when I am actually able to respond. So I won’t be checking my messages when I’m in a short queue at a shop, for example, but may well check them if I’m on the Underground for 15 minutes.
“We got to the moon and built the pyramids without checking email and Facebook. You can go a couple of hours without checking them.”
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