Having so much emails to answer was affecting my work (and still sometimes does) but my business partner is the exact opposite and watching her send emails has helped me a bit it managing my own inboxes.
The gist is: if you don’t need the email, archive/delete it immediately. If the email at ALL warrants a response, email back immediately. Don’t even think about it, just make it an automatic habit. It doesn’t even matter if you don’t have the information they need yet. Just an acknowledgement that the email was seen is half the battle.
She also straight up founded two companies and emails with worse spelling and grammar than a discord chat of teens (all lowercase and no punctuation). But! You know what? She gets shit done. Obviously she has more leniency as the founder, but if you’re someone who crafts long messages and rereads shit before sending it off (can you tell I’m like that? 🙃) then watching people be just as effective doing the exact opposite of what you’re doing can be helpful proof to cut yourself some slack.
Can’t stress enough to try to make it a habit though. It’s all about the practice. I’m still working on it too.
Oh and to deal with the worst of the backlog… schedule a time to plow through it. Pump yourself up and swallow the frog whole. Do a lil celebration once you’ve finished, because fuck yeah, you did it.
