Practice ‘Email Bankruptcy’ To Manage Overflowing Work Inboxes

Email is the predominant form of communication for organisations around the world and its easy to feel overwhelmed when your work inbox starts to pile up. Salesforce’s Robert Wickham has devised a solution to manage the flood of emails he receives that you may want to try.

Businessman yelling at emails picture from Shutterstock

Wickham is Salesforce’s regional vice-president for platforms and services in Asia-Pacific. As an executive at one of the world’s biggest cloud computing companies, he is assaulted by a torrent of emails on a daily basis. To manage this, he started experimenting with what he terms ’email bankruptcy’.

“After 72 hours, delete everything in your inbox,” Wickham told Lifehacker Australia during Dreamforce in San Francisco. “For the really important ones, the sender will email you again to follow up.”

This is excluding emails from clients, which he does sort into different folders away from the inbox. The rule applies more to ad hoc emails that come through.

“It makes you realise that you don’t have to respond to every email,” Wickham said. “We all try to manage this interruption driven lifestyle. Be it a text or an email, there’s always something competiting for your attention. My experimentatin with email bankruptcy has worked out for me so far.”

Spandas Lui travelled to San Francisco as a guest of Salesforce.


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