Work reentry tips for email overload

Ever returned from a much-needed break only to be greeted by an inbox that resembles a game of Tetris—just when you think you’ve cleared one, five more drop in? That’s exactly what happened when I returned from a two-week mission trip in Guatemala. While the trip was incredible, the email avalanche that awaited me was anything but. As leaders and executives, taking time off is essential, but the transition back to work can feel overwhelming. Here are my top 5 strategies to keep your sanity and stay on top of things after time away: 1-Prioritize Ruthlessly Not every email or meeting is a fire. Spend the first hour back triaging what needs immediate attention, what can be delegated, and what can wait. Trust me, the world won't end if you don’t reply to that group thread about last month's team lunch. 2-Set Expectations Before You Leave Before you pack your bags, make sure your team knows what to handle and when to escalate issues. This creates a buffer and keeps your inbox from becoming a disaster zone. 3-Use the 'Vacation Debrief' Meeting Schedule a meeting with key stakeholders to get a quick download on what happened while you were away. This avoids the back-and-forth email chains and gets you up to speed faster. 4-Embrace the 'Two-Minute Rule' If an email will take less than two minutes to address, do it immediately. This clears the quick tasks out of the way and gives you mental space to tackle bigger issues. 5-Pace Yourself It’s tempting to try to tackle everything on your first day back, but pace yourself. Block off your calendar for deep work time and allow yourself a few days to fully catch up. Returning from Guatemala was a stark reminder of how easily work can pile up, but these strategies helped me regain control without losing my post-vacation zen. How do you handle the post-vacation chaos? If you have any tips or want to learn more about how I maintained some of my daily routines during the mission trip, click like, share your thoughts, or ask a question in the comments below. Let’s keep the conversation going! #healthcareonlinkedin #litrendingtopics #productivity

I managed to delegate 95% of my email inbox when running an 1,800 client accounting firm. Here are 11 tips to reinvent your team's approach to email: 1. Send less email You don't get responses to emails you never send. Email is for exception handling, not ongoing repetitive work. 2. Eliminate inbox propriety Email isn't your private space, it's the receiving bay of your business. Radical email transparency solves a host of email-related pains. Find an alternative home for internal sensitive messages. Btw if you want tips like this in your inbox each week, join 9,112 other accounting firm owners on the list here https://lnkd.in/gKY9X4M9 3. Delegate Email's no more immune to delegation than any other work. The fact 10% of messages require your touch isn't a reason to DIY 100% of it. 4. Batch the FYIs For everything that doesn't require your direct attention, have your team send you a once-daily FYI digest of everything you ought to know to keep you in the loop. 5. Delegate monitoring Don't leave email up just in case something spicy arrives. The fact a client may have an emergency they want you to bail them out of isn't a reason to let yourself to be perpetually distracted. Instead, make it somebody's job to check your inbox a few times per day for anything spicy. 6. Don't start the day with email That way your day gets away from you at 11am instead of 8am. 7. Eliminate inbox propriety Let's talk about this one a second time because it's so important: Imagine an employee saying "I'll keep an eye on my inbox while I'm away" despite employing 20 other people to do the same job. They'll follow your lead, so lead by example. Let other people help. 8. Don't work out of the inbox Getting to to inbox 0 is like running in quicksand. They keep coming in as fast as you can get them out. Instead, have an assistant move messages to a "today" folder once per day, and work out of that one. 9. Don't send immediate responses Nobody gets more than 1 email per 24 hours. This change alone will reduce email volume by 50%. 10. Designate a fast lane Occasionally a client will be in the thick of things and need quick access to you for a few days. Create a temporary fast lane, let the team know to ping you if anything from the client comes through. Make this level of availability the exception, not the rule. 11. Don't let people jump the line When you respond to that text or take that call, don't expect that person to ever get back in the email queue. Clients are like mice in a maze, they'll find the fastest way to get to your cheese until you stick to your comms strategy. Email sucks. It's ok to get help. It isn't an admission of defeat It's what'll let you focus on what matters, and better support your team.

Do this today: Declare Email Bankruptcy I joined a screen sharing session with a peer yesterday. Their email inbox showed almost 80,000 unread emails.  Clearly they’re never ALL going to be read. To me, I see unread emails as something that needs addressing. I follow the “one touch” rule and address anything that can be done or delegated immediately. Anything that can’t be done in <2 mins becomes a task in my to do list. But from time to time, I still get overwhelmed.  Emails pile up. And then it becomes unwieldy. For me, I free myself from the burden of an overflowing inbox and reclaim both productivity and peace of mind. I quietly declare email bankruptcy. Email bankruptcy is the act of deleting or archiving all your unread emails and starting from scratch. It is a way of admitting that you cannot handle your current email situation and that you need a fresh start. It IS both liberating and empowering. Some people actively email all their contacts that they just declared email bankruptcy. I just do it quietly. In the first week of January, I’ll go back two weeks into December. Anything older is marked read and immediately archived. Anything in the last two weeks gets archived or delt with. I give myself 60 minutes for this task. The way I see it, anything important that I missed in the past will be followed up by the sender in the next few days anyhow. Of course, the final is to try and look at the root causes of email overload. Can I unsubscribe from some mailing lists or newsletters? Can I filter out ads or spam? Can I just reduce what I’m seeing by leveraging folders? Thankfully, the answer in many cases is yes, and I give myself 30 minutes for this task. While it may not work for everyone, I'd love to hear if you've declared email bankruptcy and did it help? Do you have other great tips for dealing with email overload after the holidays, please share in the comments. #emailTips #successmindset #31DaysofContent

Drowning in emails every morning? Here's how to reclaim your first hour at work. Stop starting your day buried in your inbox. Let Copilot digest your emails while you focus on what matters. The email morning ritual that changed my workflow: 1. Open inbox 2. Ask Copilot to summarize overnight emails 3. Identify critical actions 4. Draft quick responses 5. Move on with your day Result? I cut email processing time by 60% and start each day with clarity instead of chaos. The real power isn't just time saved - it's mental bandwidth preserved for strategic work. How do you tackle your morning email mountain?

The post-vacation overwhelm is real, and it's getting worse 📱 As many of us return from extended summer breaks, we're having an interesting conversation internally about "notification bankruptcy" - that moment when you come back to hundreds (or thousands) of messages and feel completely overwhelmed, and you consider nuking the inbox 🙅🏻♂️ This challenge is particularly serious for companies like Doist that collaborate primarily through chat tools and async communication. The very systems that give us flexibility at work also create this crushing wall of information when we return from time off. Here's what makes it so painful for me: - Everything feels "urgent" when you're catching up - You lack context on conversations that evolved while you were away - The fear of missing something important keeps you scrolling endlessly - Wasted time reading comms that have already been solved or are no longer relevant - It can take days just to get back to a baseline, much less move forward We're exploring several approaches to minimize this pain internally, sharing in case it's useful for others out there: - Notification bankruptcy - Encouraging marking all or at least large chunks of comms as read and trusting that truly important items will resurface. Only read @mentions and direct messages. - Structured triage - Dedicate specific time blocks to different message types. Start with DMs, then recent squad/team updates, then general channels. Set time limits to avoid rabbit holes and add long threads as tasks for later dates. - Email deletion strategy - Set an auto-reply saying you'll delete all emails when you return, so people should follow up after your return date if still relevant. Side note - I've been doing this for many years and have found most issues resolve themselves during your absence. - Temporary delegation with handoff projects - Create a centralized Todoist project where covering team members add (only) critical updates and decisions that need your attention (with links and context, very important!). Much more focused than scrolling through hundreds of messages. - Selective catch-up calls - Cancel all non-essential calls during your return week and schedule brief syncs with key team members to get updates on complex situations. The reality is that most of the "urgent" stuff from while you were away either got resolved without you or isn't actually urgent anymore, and very likely, your absence created an opportunity for another teammate to step into that space and grow from it. We tend to think we have to read and reply to everything, but declaring bankruptcy might actually be doing your team (and yourself) a service. I'd love to know how others are dealing with the post-vacation message flood, and any strategies that have worked (or failed) for your team? Always looking for better approaches to this modern workplace challenge 🤝 **Photo of Koda monitoring my approach to post-vacay inbox management 🐶