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ARTICLE
PRODUCTIVITY
6 Ways to Set
Boundaries Around
Email
by Sarah K. Peck

This document is authorized for use only by HYUNMIN CHO in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio University from Jul 2021 to Jan 2022.
 For the exclusive use of H. CHO, 2021.

PRODUCTIVITY

6 Ways to Set Boundaries

Around Email
by Sarah K. Peck
SEPTEMBER 20, 2019

MISSTUNI/GETTY IMAGES

The internet is full of advice about email. Search for tips, and you could spend a few years of your life
triaging, systematizing, and organizing your inbox. Yet despite these systems and tools, email still
bests us, taking away precious time from other work we’d like to be doing and the lives we’d like to
be living. This is a widespread problem: more and more people feel overwhelmed with work and
email, and the pace hasn’t shown any signs of slowing.

Email is no longer just email: messages are sent across dozens of platforms, and people now field text
messages, Instagram DM’s, Slack alerts, Voxer messages, Facebook inboxes, and more. The world is

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 For the exclusive use of H. CHO, 2021.

full of bids for our attention, and we get stuck in the loop of answering messages, putting in longer
hours to “catch up.” But if we shift to answering emails at all times, we shift to receiving emails at all
times, a vicious problem.

In addition to the deluge, email has masqueraded for far too long as both urgent and important. Part
of the problem is that there isn’t enough friction. We become inconsiderate in requests for time and
attention because email is free and fast. Sending messages speedily makes us think we’re important
instead of taking time to really chew on ideas, and it punts work onto other people’s agendas rather
than asking us to figure things our ourselves. In the end it’s not about replying faster or having a
better response system or the right tools. All of this is a signal that there’s something deeper that’s
wrong.

The real problem: we don’t know how to spend our attention

The more pressing challenge of today is first deciding what to focus on. Culturally, we are terrible
about boundaries and prioritization. This is reflected in part in our consumption habits, and the wide
sweeping fame of Marie Kondo’s minimal living: we are drowning in both physical and digital clutter.
Email isn’t the problem — boundaries are. Instead of getting “better” at email, we need to get better
at prioritization.

Ruthless prioritization is not common enough. In the past, we only had one priority, explains Greg
McKeown in his book, Essentialism, because the plural word “priorities” did not exist. At some point
mid-century, we shifted to allow for multiple “priorities” and we started to use the word as a verb.
Today, we act as though we can have dozens of priorities, instead of choosing one thing to be in
focus.

As leaders and managers, our job is to provide clarity and specificity around where we’re heading and
what we’re focused on. Without decisive trajectories, we drown our employees in piles of wasted
emails and projects. In order to get better at email, we must get better at saying no.

Once we have focus, we also need email to have clearer boundaries

Even if we get on board with focused prioritization — a big ask — we still have a problem: email tools
don’t effectively communicate boundaries. Creating context-specific behavioral expectations is
difficult in the digital sphere, and something we are all figuring out how to do. Part of this is on us as
people to set the limits, part of this is the technology.

Here are six ways to set email boundaries and how to clearly convey them:

1. Email signature disclaimers. Write an explanation below your email signature that tells people
how long it might take to receive a reply and what your office hours are. Increase transparency to
how you work.

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2. Use your autoresponder generously. Several writers I know use their auto-responders to carve out
chunks of time (weeks!) to focus on bigger projects. This communicates that you are away and
when you can expect a reply.
3. Add instructions on your website or on social media. Tell people your typical response times so
that they can plan ahead accordingly. On my website’s contact page, I explain that it often takes
two weeks to receive a reply. Whether it takes you two months to get back to people because
you’re a brand-new team, or you try to get back to people within 48 hours of a request is up to you.
Just tell people what to expect.
4. Tell people what requests will be ignored. Use your Twitter bio, your contact page, or your
employee operations manual to tell people how to use your communication channels. Inform
people what will be deleted or ignored. Don’t take unsolicited requests? Delete them if they come
in.
5. Set communications guidelines for your team. When adding new members to your team, taking
on new clients, or even starting a new project, specify how and when you like to be communicated
with, and ask your colleagues and clients their preferences as well. Get specific about your
channels, style, and availability. (For example, when I set up Slack rooms as a teacher, I tell people
my office hours are on Fridays and my typical reply times.)
6. Lead by example. If you’re answering emails late in the evenings and all day on weekends, you’re
telling your team that you expect the same from them. Use a service like Boomerang to schedule
emails to be sent later or Inbox Pause to control when emails appear in your inbox. Or better yet,
step away from your inbox entirely on weekends and uphold your end of the bargain.

Email can be a tool we use to connect, to help other people, to communicate, and even to think. But
the deluge of modern email has come at the expense of leisure time and quality time, and too much
of it erodes our ability to do high-quality work. Prioritizing ruthlessly can help us reduce the digital
clutter. With that, your email inbox might get a bit simpler.

Sarah K. Peck is an author and startup advisor based in New York City. She’s the founder and executive director of
Startup Pregnant, a media company documenting the stories of women’s leadership across work and family, and host of
the Startup Pregnant Podcast.

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This document is authorized for use only by HYUNMIN CHO in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio University from Jul 2021 to Jan 2022.