Can email management be a tool to loving people? Can cleaning out our inbox to zero emails each day show respect for others while giving us the power to manage our days more effectively?
I had this thought after listening to Jeff Sander’s podcast about “Equilibrium Zero” this week.
While doing Day 2 of The Money Saving Mom’s “Make Over Your Evenings” e-course, I followed her recommendation to check out Jeff Sander’s books and his blog. I loved his concept of “Equilibrium Zero”, which tells you to put your world back to a state of zero at the end of your day so that you can tackle your tomorrow. Put away all the stuff you took out today or new things that came in, whether in physical, paper or digital form, such as toys, dishes, mail, and email. Set everything back to zero.
He tells us how-to practice Equilibrium Zero on different areas of our lives. In explaining how to get your inbox to zero, he says that replying to all emails within 24 hrs is about efficiency in his life but more importantly it is about caring about the person on the other end of the email.
I have been mulling this over – could loving people come in the form of replying to their emails in an a time sensitive manner? If we were each to treat our inboxes with more respect could we see:
- The people in our lives feeling heard rather than shut out?
- Organizations, churches and schools being more effective and cohesive since we all read and took action on the information they deployed to us?
- Our own self-love increasing as the voices of unfinished tasks stop nagging at us that we are not good enough?
Now feel empowered to take back your inbox for a bigger purpose than giving yourself a gold-star. Unless gold-stars work for you.