email is shit

In 2025, email is a productivity sinkhole, and I'll be blunt about it.

Here's the foundational things to do to avoid chaos:

1. Create separate email accounts:
• Marketing email: Use one for every company spamming you and you never have to check it.
• Transactional email: For banking, utilities, and services—strictly for those. Places people bill you.
• Personal email: Exclusively for friends, family, and close connections.
• Work email: Just use the work email for work. Never personal stuff. And if you have different work interests, keep those separate too.
2. Why you want your email to be separate:
• Use your work email solely for professional matters—don’t mix in personal or commercial emails.
• Set up separate emails for side hustles, one per project.
• Consider a dedicated email for cloud service sign-ups to maintain consistency across your projects.

Getting this right prevents massive headaches later on.

What if you leave a job? What if your side hussle ends up conflicted with your work email? Do you really want marketing emails in amongst your work or side hussle emails? No you don’t. And you can ‘combine’ them in one email inbox if you want that.

Use email only for formal communication, transactions, or record-keeping—not casual chats. For that use messaging services.

Additional tips for email mastery

• Keep emails concise: People skip long winded messages— so get to the point.
• CC for visibility: Include relevant people to avoid complaints about being excluded; it’s your paper trail, and theirs.
• Avoid sensitive content: Assume every email could be used in court. If you don’t want something to be admitted into evidence, don’t write it.
• Don’t email complaints: Avoid venting or sensitive topics; call instead.
• Delay adding recipients: Draft fully, then add and verify recipients before sending.
• Avoid mass emails: Unless critical, they annoy people—nobody wants your fluff.
• Limit frequency: Don’t bombard someone with multiple emails daily—it’s irritating.
• Don’t file emails: Filing leads to lost messages or misplacement. Use search, sorting by date or sender. Reason being, some emails you can just never clearly categorise.
• Ignore irrelevant emails: Don’t delete—just leave them; respond with “noted” if needed.
• Seniority means brevity: The higher your role, the less you write—be succinct.
• Protect focus: Don’t reply instantly unless it’s quick (under 2 minutes) and resolves the issue. Call for complex matters to avoid essay length exchanges.

These practices deliver:

• Time savings: Minimising email use frees up hours.
• Reduced stress: A streamlined email setup feels manageable.
• Improved focus: Ignore non essential emails ruthlessly—prioritise what matters.
• Reliability: Respond promptly to critical emails, meet deadlines, and act immediately on quick tasks to close them out.

Mastering email is a life skill—nail it early to save unimaginable time. Relying on email for everything makes you inefficient and unpopular.

Email can break people

I’ve seen email overwhelm destroy people’s productivity. If that’s you, conduct an email diagnostic:

• Track usage: For 3 days, log the number of emails received, time spent, and types (work, personal, spam).
• Identify issues: Are you swamped by spam, missing key emails, over crafting replies, or sending too much, causing a flood of responses?
• Take action:
• Aim for a zero inbox daily.
• Respond faster with less detail, targeting only essentials.
• Reduce clutter: Use separate accounts, cut spam sources, and limit email contacts.

Proper email control can save you 10 hours a week no exaggeration.

Conclusion

Email management can make or break your efficiency.

I’ve seen people cry and breakdown over emails. It’s a dangerous territory.

Use distinct accounts for marketing, transactions, personal, and work-related communication—no exceptions.

Keep work emails strictly professional; assign side hustles their own accounts. Use email only for formal needs or transactions, not casual conversation.

Write briefly, assume legal scrutiny, and avoid complaints or mass emails. Don’t file—search instead. Ignore irrelevant messages, reply minimally, or call for sensitive issues.

These habits save time, cut stress, and sharpen focus.

Track your email patterns for three days to pinpoint problems and aim for a zero inbox to reclaim hours weekly.

And if it just gets too much, just start responding only to the important ones and ticking ‘like’ on the rest.

Control email, or it’ll control you.