I have learned and experienced it many times with a lot of people with whom I work: having a well managed inbox helps to be a lot more efficient/organized, to be a high performer.

Having an inbox that is a mess has very often the same recurring results: skipping emails, missing deadlines, forgetting tasks, bad time management, poor priorization, frustrated colleagues who are not getting replies, etc… It is also quickly becoming very toxic for oneself and generating lots of anxiety since the number of emails become a mountain impossible to climb, this becomes overwhelming and generate anxiety until we just give up.

I have lost some very talented colleagues just because of this issue, they just gave up before I could identify the source of their anxiety and stress, and before I could coach them. This is why I mention this very often to my managers when I see someone in their team to struggle on delivering or who becomes too stressed, and unfortunately in most cases I am correct, their inbox is a disaster.

How to do define an Inbox that is a mess? From my experience, over 100 emails (read and unread) = MESS. Less than 50 total emails in your inbox = SUCCESS.

And too often I heard from my teams that everything is ok since they have less than 50 unread emails… This is not the point, the point is 50 emails in total, read and unread.

I keep repeating this over and over to everyone I work with but unfortunately I am not always heard… and this is painful since I know how much impact it will have on their success and on the success of the ones they manage.

This is the responsibility of every manager to put each of their team members on a path to success, and this entails that they are able to coach them to properly manage their inbox.

This is such an important topic, I wish I could be better at convincing my teams…