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Woman pausing to think at her laptop, illustrating the value of making time to think and plan.

19 Aug Everything Works Better When You Make Time to Think

Posted at 09:42h in Planning Tools, Stress Management 0 Comments

When was the last time you gave yourself time to simply think? Not answer email. Not cross something off your list. Not solve the problem that was shouting the loudest. Just think.

When work is busy, thinking can feel like a luxury. There is always something more immediate demanding our attention. So we keep moving. We respond, react, solve, finish, and start again. And yet, some of our best work happens when we stop doing long enough to think about what we’re doing. That’s what planning really is. Planning is making time to think.

One of my clients once said something I’ve never forgotten: “I used to think I didn’t have time to plan. Now I realize planning is the greatest expression of self-care.” At first glance, planning and self-care might not seem to belong in the same sentence. But think about what happens when you don’t plan. You carry your work around in your head. You wonder what you’re forgetting. You remember something important while you’re making dinner, walking the dog, exercising, or trying to fall asleep. You finish a busy week having accomplished a lot, yet somehow still feel as though you should have done more.

Now imagine something different. What would change if you knew what mattered most this week? What if you could trust that the important things had been captured and considered? What if you got more of the right things done—not because you worked harder, but because you had stopped long enough to decide where your attention belonged? And perhaps most importantly: What would your time away from work feel like if you weren’t spending it worrying about work? That may be the greatest benefit of planning.

Creating Space Before You Need It

It’s especially difficult to stop and plan when you’re stressed. When there is too much to do, taking an hour to think about the work can feel almost absurd. Surely the responsible thing is to keep working. But I see the opposite happen with my clients again and again. They stop. They look at what’s coming. They sort through the things competing for their attention. They make some decisions. And the noise quiets down.

They feel less stressed. More confident. More focused. They know what they’re doing and why. Planning hasn’t created more hours in the week. It has created clarity about how to use the hours they have.

Your Best Thinking May Need Different Conditions

Thinking time doesn’t have to look a particular way. Some people like to plan at the end of the week. Others would rather spend an hour on Sunday preparing for Monday. One client might sit with a favorite coffee at a café. Another might put on music and sit outside. Someone else may move away from their desk and work at the kitchen table.

The point isn’t to find the “correct” planning ritual, it’s to find your planning ritual; to discover the conditions that help you step out of reacting and into thinking. Monday morning often sounds like the obvious time to plan, but in practice many people simply want to get going. Friday at 4:00 may sound efficient, but by then they’re mentally finished. The best time is the time you will actually protect. And if something gets in the way? Move the time. Don’t eliminate it.

Weekly Planning Can Be Surprisingly Simple

Planning doesn’t need to become another elaborate productivity system. At its core, weekly planning can be as simple as reviewing your calendar, updating your task list, and deciding what matters most in the coming week. Everything else can be customized. Maybe you need to clear some email, schedule exercise, block time for focused work, process the sticky notes on your desk, or close the collection of browser tabs that has quietly become its own ecosystem.

I often suggest using a checklist at first—not because everyone should plan the same way, but because a checklist keeps you from having to remember how to plan while you’re trying to plan. And once you’ve done the thinking for the week, daily planning becomes much easier. Five minutes may be enough to look at the day ahead and decide what you want to accomplish.

What Would Thinking Time Give You?

There will always be more to do. The goal of planning isn’t to create a perfectly controlled week or finish every task on your list. It’s to make conscious choices about what deserves your time and attention—to work with greater confidence, to stop carrying so much unfinished thinking around in your head, to be more present when you’re working, and more present when you’re not.

Maybe planning really is an expression of self-care. Because when you make time to think about your work, you may discover that you also create more room for your life.

Better Work. Better Life.

Want to Make More Time to Think?

Planning gets easier when you have a productivity system you can trust. In Productivity for How You’re Wired, I help you build practical systems for planning, prioritizing, managing tasks, and organizing your work in ways that fit how you’re wired. The goal isn’t to squeeze more into every day. It’s to create more clarity, make better decisions, and spend less time worrying about what you might be missing. If you’re ready to work with greater intention—and create more space for life outside of work—you’ll find practical strategies you can use right away. Available wherever books are sold, including Amazon in print, eBook, and audio.

Or, if you’d like support creating a planning and productivity approach that works for you, explore my productivity coaching options here.

01 Jul How to Use AI for Email Processing – Not Email Decisions

Posted at 21:58h in Leadership, Organize to Thrive, Productivity, Tech & Digital Clutter 0 Comments

Last week I worked with a client who had just received a well-deserved promotion. His new manager voiced one concern: she was worried he might miss something important in his email. He was smart, capable, and willing to work hard. But years of accumulated email made it difficult to distinguish what actually required his attention.

For years, my recommendation would have been straightforward: reduce the noise first. Archive older email that no longer requires action. Remove newsletters, completed projects, duplicate conversations, and information that belongs in a reference folder. Then work through what’s left and decide whether each email should be filed, deleted, or kept as an action item.

That process still works. But something has changed. Today, AI can help with routine sorting and review. Instead of manually combing through thousands of messages, AI can identify newsletters, group similar conversations, summarize long email threads, highlight messages that appear to require a response, and even suggest rules or filters to keep your inbox cleaner going forward.

Notice what AI isn’t doing. It isn’t deciding what matters. You are.

AI Changes the Work, Not the Principles.

I still believe the biggest reason people feel controlled by email, rather than in control of it, is that they keep too much in their inbox. The result? Stress increases, important emails get buried, and managers begin to worry that something important will slip through the cracks.

Here’s the core methodology: every email should fall into one of three classifications.

Classification	Explanation	Action
Trash	I don’t need it anymore	Delete it on the spot
Reference	I might need it later	File it in a folder (Outlook) or label (Gmail)
Action	I need to do something with it soon	Leave it in your inbox and organize it by priority (more on this later)

Step 1: Clear obsolete emails from your inbox.

Email search has improved dramatically. You can usually find an old message when you need it, but keeping every searchable email in your inbox creates clutter and makes the inbox harder to manage. Instead, create one folder or label for older emails and move them there. The name does not matter; the goal is to give yourself one place to search later.
- What to call it? It doesn’t matter. Call it what works for your brain: Old Inbox, Past Inbox, Past Emails, Reference…
- How many old emails to move? For most people, anything more than a month or two old is no longer actionable. If two months feels safer to you, that’s perfectly fine. The goal isn’t to be perfect, it’s to get your inbox back to a manageable size. You’ll want to move a block of emails from your inbox into your Reference folder.
The goal is to clear the clutter as quickly as possible to give yourself a fighting chance to get your inbox under control. The more emails you leave in your inbox the more decisions you’ll have to make. Remember, you’re just moving where you search, it’s a waste of time to worry about processing them – we’re moving forward!
Move old emails in blocks. If you try to move too many at once, your computer may slow down or freeze, so try 100 or 200 at a time. To select a group, click one email, hold Shift, click another email, and then drag the selected block into your new Reference folder.
Sometimes Gmail may leave messages in your inbox if they still have the Inbox label. If that happens, ask AI how to remove the Inbox label after moving or archiving messages. The point is to clear your inbox, not just copy messages somewhere else.

Can AI help with this? Not much. This part is mostly mechanical: selecting older emails and moving them into one reference folder. The good news is that there is very little thinking involved. Put something not too compelling on TV, move emails in manageable batches, and remember: this is a once-and-done task.

Step 2: Processing what’s left in your inbox

Before AI:

Sort by sender and file or delete what’s no longer actionable.
Sort by subject and clean up duplicate or outdated threads.
Set up rules for recurring emails you need to keep but don’t need to see regularly, such as newsletters, shipping notifications, and receipts.
Organize what remains by priority.

With AI: Let AI become your assistant. These AI prompts do not ask AI to make decisions for you. They ask AI to show you the landscape so you can decide faster.

Show me every newsletter I’ve never opened (then you decide: do you unsubscribe or make a rule to move it automatically out of your inbox into a folder.)
Group similar emails – instead of having to read and process 50 emails you can read 2 or 3 and decide on the action.
Find emails that require responses – let AI help you identify what’s actionable
Identify duplicate threads
Summarize long conversations
Suggest rules
Find commitments
Identify emails I’ve already answered that no longer require any action.
What kind of emails do I have left in my inbox? A few minutes later it returns this:
- 212 newsletters
- 43 receipts
- 18 travel confirmations
- 5 legal documents
- 9 unanswered client emails
- 7 commitments
- 11 invoices awaiting payment

Instead of spending 90 minutes figuring out what’s in your inbox, you can spend those 90 minutes deciding what actually deserves your attention. Now you’re talking about priorities. That’s a huge shift.

Step 3: Respond in a timely manner

Stay on top of your emails daily and respond promptly to emails that need to be addressed today.

Before AI:

- We’re going to sort your emails by priority (I love using categories for this, more details here, and if you love this idea, buy my book and read chapter 12) so you are working on the most important emails first.
- Then you are going to take it one email at a time and respond… and respond…and respond

With AI:

- I still love sorting by categories, so I know what to do first
- Let AI help you draft a response. Instead of reading, thinking, and writing from scratch, give AI three key points you want to communicate and ask it to “write a concise response.”

Things I would never let AI do:

- I would never let AI permanently decide about Delete – File – Action. Those are judgment decisions. You could, however, ask for recommendations.
  - AI suggests
  - Human decides

Other Things to consider:

- When should you trust AI? Always verify.
- How do you avoid becoming lazy? Let AI be your collaborator and editor.
- Don’t ask it to think for you, ask it to think with you.
- How do you keep your authentic voice? Over time AI will learn your style, however if something is important discipline yourself to write from scratch. Allow it to help you think… but then start a fresh document and start writing.

Connecting AI to your email

ChatGPT can now connect directly to supported email accounts for eligible plans. Claude is moving in this direction as well, and there are also dedicated AI email assistants. But whether someone can connect depends heavily on whether it’s a personal account or a company-managed account.
Personal Gmail or Outlook
- This is the easiest.
- A user goes into ChatGPT Settings → Connectors (or Apps, depending on the interface), signs into Gmail or Outlook, grants permission, and then ChatGPT can search, summarize, and reference their mailbox when asked. It can also work with calendars and contacts if those connectors are enabled.
- For example, someone could ask:
  - “What emails require a reply?”
  - “Summarize everything from Susan over the last two weeks.”
  - “Find invoices I haven’t responded to.”
  - “What commitments did I make yesterday?”
- That’s a very different experience than copying and pasting emails into ChatGPT.
Corporate Accounts
- Many companies don’t allow employees to simply connect AI to corporate email. But those companies do have corporate AI tools that are integrated and approved. If your company uses ChatGPT Enterprise, you can connect through that. If your company uses Microsoft Copilot, you can connect through that. If your company uses Google Gemini, you can connect through that. Ask your IT department which AI tools are approved in your organization, then ask that AI assistant how to connect to your email.

AI is changing how we work, but it isn’t changing the fundamentals of productivity.

Your inbox still needs a trusted system. Your priorities still require judgment. Your relationships still deserve thoughtful responses.

Let AI handle more of the organizing so you can spend more time making good decisions.

Want to Build an Email System That Actually Works?

AI is changing how we process information, but it doesn’t replace the need for a trusted productivity system. In Productivity for How You’re Wired, I walk you through the complete email methodology—including how to reduce inbox clutter, organize actionable email, create sustainable systems, and build productivity habits that fit how you’re wired. The technology will continue to evolve. The principles won’t. If you’re ready to create a calmer, more intentional way of working, you’ll find practical strategies you can use immediately. Available wherever books are sold, including Amazon in print, eBook, and audio.

21 May Working From Wherever You Are

Posted at 08:56h in Planning Tools, Productivity, Productivity for How You're Wired, Tips for Easier Living 0 Comments

With summer upon us many of us will be changing where we’re working from. The following are things to consider regardless of where you’re working from.

Working Remotely

Working from home is not new. Many entrepreneurs have been doing it for years. Remote work has been knocking at the door of corporate America for some time. However, COVID brought it mainstream. The global pandemic and the high proportion of workers working out of the office have forced us to rethink how and where we work.

Moving into the future, one thing we can be sure about is working away from the office, at least part of the time, will be routine. Knowing how to work effectively, regardless of location, is central to the success of today’s workers.

The biggest challenge about working remotely is lack of structure. When we no longer have to wake up at a specific time, commute, attend in–person meetings, network in person, and “go to work,” our time foundation shifts. Personal time and work time blend together. Many people are in work-mode all the time.

When we leave home and “go to work,” natural guardrails form. By simple proximity, we are not doing home related duties or having personal conversations when we are at “work.” Yes, we may take a call from a family member or spend a few minutes on a personal task, but we aren’t walking the dog, doing laundry, or letting the repair person in.

When working from home we spend more time on “home” tasks than anticipated and that means it takes longer to get our work done. To avoid that work/life confusion, consider how to structure your time so there is separation between work and personal tasks.

Working Hybrid – Remote, From Home, and At Work

Productivity in the hybrid work environment focuses on mobility and flexibility. The goal is to work effectively regardless of location. Your office is often in your work bag.

You already face the challenges of structuring your work time when you’re in the office. Hybrid work brings more complexities because now you also have to consider where you work and when. Building systems to support your productivity is helpful.

Going to work is helpful too. Humans are social animals and we are much healthier with human interaction. While not everyone looks to their work to fill their need for belonging, many do, at least to some degree.

If we can structure our work and our time effectively, the hybrid model, working remotely or from home for Focus Work time AND going to the office to collaborate and connect, is the best of both worlds. But how do we manage our productivity on the move?

Remote and At Home

You now have much more control over your time. While your meetings are scheduled, everything else is fluid. No one sees your true start times or end times. There is no peer pressure about lunch breaks or coffee breaks. And no one is watching when you are actually producing.

You’ve gained time by not commuting. Does this allow you to exercise before you start working or sleep later if that’s what your body needs?
You have flexibility when you do your Focus Work. Quiet without interruption is ideal. Is it best to wake early and get a couple of hours in before family activities or regular work interruptions start or better to work in the evening when meetings and emails subside?
Can you walk the dog (or just take a walk) at midday for some fresh air and to reenergize?
Do you need to tag team with your partner, one working early and the other working late, to be sure there is coverage for the kids?
Do you need to plan start times and end times so you have enough structure to get results and know when to stop?

Hybrid

A hybrid situation, where you spend part of your time in the office and part of your time at home, has advantages as well. All the above holds true for your time working out of the office. When we add in a day, or two, or three in the office each week, good things can happen.

Time in the office can be energizing. Take advantage of the lift you get when you’re with others, understanding that effectiveness improves with a change of environment and social interaction (even for most introverts).
Child care and family obligations shift. Going to work can provide a much-needed break. The flexibility enables you to be better in each situation.
Self-care continues to be important. Taking time for a walking meeting helps with your steps goal. Leaders are on the lookout for ideas to support the new normal. Tell them what you need.
Planning start and stop times in the office is helpful to creating routine. These time anchors provide benchmarks to keep you on task and effective.

With proper planning and consideration your summer work can be successfully executed regardless of where you’re working from.

This is an excerpt from Chapter 13 of my new book Productivity for How You’re Wired available on Amazon. Many templates are included via the time tools link discussed in the book.

29 Apr Top Tips for Email

Posted at 09:45h in Productivity, Productivity for How You're Wired, Stress Management, Tech & Digital Clutter, Time Management, Tips for Easier Living 0 Comments

Does email suck the life from you? Do you worry about missing important emails? Do you wish email supported you better? Here are some new ideas that can help!

Consider Your Email Style?

Different people seem to be fine with different amounts of emails in their inboxes. While there is a correlation between structure preference and email style, it probably has little bearing on what you’re doing now. Do you see yourself in any of these cases?

Inbox 10,000+ – If I need something, I will search for it. If I miss something it’s ok. If it’s really important it will come up again.
Inbox 500 to 1500 – It’s unmanageable. I don’t kid myself. I know I miss important things and it does cause stress.
Inbox 25/100/250 – I can get it under control. Identifying a number I don’t want to get above cues me to spend an hour cleaning up my inbox. Still, there has to be an easier way.
Inbox one page – As long as I can see everything in my inbox, I’m good. Once it goes to a second page, it’s time to pause and clean it up.
Inbox Zero – All emails are moved into folders for future action. Nothing stays in the inbox. (Use with caution. For most, since there is no automatic cue once an email is moved from the inbox, it is never thought of again.)

Manage Your Inbox Contents

What belongs in your inbox? Some clients prefer to keep everything in their inbox. However, there is a high risk of losing important emails. Some clients are fine with the philosophy “if it’s important, I’ll get it again,” though most prefer a more proactive solution.

Keeping everything in your inbox is like keeping all your trash on your desk. Unlike paper, however, the problem isn’t finding it when you go to look for it — the robust search function helps with that. The problem is that you won’t know to look for something you don’t know you have.

To have confidence in your email system, the only items that should be kept in your inbox are the to-do actionable items. Those emails you MUST do something with.

If you have read your inbox shouldn’t be a to-do list, I disagree. It’s inefficient to use it any other way. However, this only works if you move everything except actionable emails out of your inbox.

To have control over your inbox, you need to judiciously decide the fate of each email. There are three options: File, Delete, and Action:

FILE emails to keep for possible future reference
DELETE emails you don’t need
ACTION emails remain in your inbox

Clear Out Your Inbox

Create a folder/label called Reference Emails or Past Emails or something that resonates with you that will indicate to you where your older emails will reside.
1. You will move all emails over two months old into this file.
2. You’ll want to move over a few hundred at a time. If you move too many at once, you may overload your computer’s resources and lock them up.
3. In order to keep this information current, I’m not going to give you specific keystrokes to identify and move a range of emails. Instead, do an internet search on “batch move emails” and include your computer (PC/Mac) and email platform (Outlook/Gmail).
4. Some clients are more comfortable moving the old emails into files labeled by year. This gives them more of a direction as to where to look when trying to locate something. On the other hand, it gives more places to search.
You now have two months of email remaining in your inbox. The next step is to process these and remove additional non-actionable email.
1. Do a sort by subject — This will allow you to batch delete or batch file large groups of emails that are not actionable. Look for:
  1. Projects that have been completed.
  2. Events that have passed.
2. Do a search by sender — This will allow you to continue the batch deleting or batch moving process. Look for:
  1. Newsletters you’ll never read.
  2. Ads that are no longer relevant.
  3. Multiple emails of a string and you only need to keep the last one or the ones with attachments.
3. Set up rules/filters — As you are going through these remaining emails, look for opportunities for similar grouping of emails to bypass your inbox.
  1. You can tell your email program to route specific emails to specific files without stopping in your inbox. This is helpful for items you don’t need to look at regularly.
  2. Some use rules or filters for newsletters, forum posts, or the like. Others use them for confirmation emails that don’t need to be looked at yet need to be kept for possible future reference.
  3. To keep things simple, create a file called RULES and direct all emails that you have created a rule for there. It makes searching, scanning, and purging simple. There is no need to overcomplicate this — remember, if it’s not easy, it’s too hard.
  4. To learn how to use the rules function with your email system, search “how to use rules in Outlook/Gmail.”
You will be left with far fewer emails than you started with. These emails can then be processed into FILE, DELETE, or left in the inbox as an ACTION item.

It is important you do this process in a short period of time. This is a great task to do in one or two chunks this week. To get your inbox under control, you need to reduce the number of emails so when future emails come in, you can process those and maintain the integrity of YOUR system.

This is an excerpt from Chapter 12 of my new book Productivity for How You’re Wired available on Amazon. Many templates are included via the time tools link discussed in the book.

23 May Best Practices To Get Your Email Under Control

Posted at 08:58h in Planning Tools, Productivity, Tech & Digital Clutter, Time Management 2 Comments

Email – you can’t live with it and you can’t live without it. It seems to take on a life of its own and it seems to impact everyone’s productivity. Today we will look at some email best practices that if we all followed would make everyone a little more productive.

Email Composition

Keep the SUBJECT relevant – update the subject line as topics change. Remembering that people search by subject will hopefully motivate you to take that extra second to check that your subject line is relevant. During the course of an email conversation, if the topic changes, change your subject line.
Be concise – make your point as briefly as possible. Long and complex emails are often put aside, never to be looked at again. If you want an answer, keep your message simple and short.
Be decisive – minimize emails going back and forth by making decisions. Instead of saying “should I call you or do you want to call me,” say, “I’ll call you.” Instead of saying “should we talk at 10 am or 11 am,” say “let’s talk at 11 am.” Better yet, say “I’ll call you at 11 am unless I hear from you otherwise.”
Share sentiments sparingly – while “thank you” and “great job” are lovely thoughts, email may not be the best venue to share them. Be mindful of email overwhelm before you share kudos and DO NOT REPLY ALL.

Email Triage

Get extraneous emails out of your inbox immediately
- if you have reviewed an email and it has no use to you, DELETE IT IMMEDIATELY! You wouldn’t leave trash around your house, why would you leave it in your inbox?
- For emails containing information that you might need some day and CAN’T GET ANYWHERE else, MOVE the email out of your inbox into a folder.
Unsubscribe – when sitting around waiting at the doctor’s office, for the train, for carpool, or on hold, use that time to unsubscribe from emails that no longer serve you. The fewer that come in, the more you’ll be able to manage the important ones.
Set Rules – if your email client (Outlook, Gmail, etc.) offers the option to set rules, use them to automatically move emails that are not important out of your inbox. I have one folder called RULES that I use for things that I don’t need, but sometimes like to see (favorite store ads, newsletters, political information, etc.) The rule is set to automatically move those items from the inbox to the RULES folder. That way I can check if and when I want to.

Email Communication:

Feel no obligation to respond – just because someone asks you a question or wants your time doesn’t mean it is productive to respond. It is okay to delete something that is unsolicited or not important.
Stop the REPLY ALL craziness – Use Reply All very sparingly. Almost all the time your answer is most relevant to the sender and a time suck for everyone else.
Use Bcc when sending to a group – if sending out emails to a group be sure to use the Bcc (blind carbon copy) option rather than the Cc (carbon copy) option. This will ensure that others in the email string don’t have access to everyone else’s email address. It is poor form to publicly share other people’s emails with your group.

Shift your Perspective

Think of email like snail mail.

Do you feel obligated to open every piece of junk mail that comes into your home and office?
Worse yet, could you imagine KEEPING every piece of junk mail that comes into your home and office (gosh I hope not; and if the answer is yes, I have wonderful Professional Organizer colleagues that can help you!)
Just like you get rid of the garbage in your physical life it is necessary to get rid of the garbage in your virtual life too!

30 Jul How to Keep Email from Taking Over Your Life

Posted at 13:29h in Focus and Prioritize, Productivity, Tech & Digital Clutter, Time Management, Tips for Easier Living 1 Comment

We seem to live in a world of 2 email camps:

NEVER look at your email first thing in the morning
ALWAYS look at your email first thing in the morning

The “NEVERS” believe that if you get caught up in email minutia you will not get your most important work.

The “ALWAYS” believe that if you don’t know what’s lurking and clear up the “must-dos” than you may miss something important.

I suspect that some of this has to do with the type of work you do and the kind of responsibilities you have. For those that work globally, email may in fact be your primary means of communication. For those of us in the service business we communicate with our clients via email and I personally, could NEVER not be an “ALWAYS.”

HOWEVER, it isn’t this cut and dry. It isn’t about ALWAYS or NEVER. Like everything, the answer lies in the grey zone. The question is: What systems can be put in place to ensure that email doesn’t take over your life? I’ve tried a lot of different things, and I’ve worked with my clients to try different things. As with ALL productivity systems, there is no such thing as one size fits all, and no one system ALWAYS works for the same person ALL the time. Different circumstances require different systems. Here are a few you may want to consider:

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