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Here's a step-by-step to drastically reduce the deluge of emails between you and your clients/internal team. An absolute GAMECHANGER 👇 Enter: The Collaboration Doc 👏 I’ve stolen this idea from Cal Newport’s podcast Deep Questions. I immediately implemented it with my own clients and they LOVE it. Fundamentally, most people don’t need a response *right now* – they just need to be safe in the knowledge that everything is being taken care of. So all the Collaborative Doc is is a very clean, clearly outlined document that you and your clients and/or your internal teams can use asynchronously to reduce overhead tax. Overhead tax is all the unnecessary (and exhausting) meetings and emails flying back and forth that surround a project. Here’s how to drastically reduce your overhead tax immediately: Step 1: Create a shared document This could be in Notion, Google Docs, Word or whatever works best for you and your client. Make sure your privacy settings are all correct. Step 2: Make it incredibly easy to navigate I have mine split into: 📆 Key Details 📝 Meeting Notes 🧠 Brain Dump Within Brain Dump I’ve further split that into all the key stakeholders so they know exactly where to put their notes. Break this down however you want. They key is that it's all clear and formatted, it looks nice, but it's not overworked. This should be as bare bones as possible. Step 3: Agree a cadence The point here is to reassure your client that you will absolutely refer to their notes. If you have a weekly Wednesday meeting for example, say that you will check all notes first thing on a Tuesday. They can be confident that nothing will go un-reviewed and anything that needs to be actioned before the meeting will be. Meanwhile, you get to be clearer on when you work on each client/project, as everyone has a set cadence. Step 4: Be religious about your collaborative documents This only works if your client has absolute trust that you will keep the document updated and reviewed. Do not let anything slip! WHY THIS WORKS Instead of emailing back and forth, clients put any questions, ideas, notes etc into this one, living document. It helps you to whittle communication down to the essential, increasing the value of your work, your time and the experience your client has (remember it's reducing overhead tax for them, too!) I've done the above example for working with a client, but it works just as well for internal teams, too. It gives everyone more time as people know that things are documented and will be picked up, so there's no need to just fire little things off on slack unless they're actually needed there and then. For both groups, streamlining like this means that you can save time and energy for when a response really is needed right away. Simple, I know, but honestly SUCH a winner. Do you do this already? What problems do you foresee and how would you tweak it?