If you're one of those people that have like, 5000 unwrite emails in your inbox, or if you're one of those people that can't feel like you can't rest if there aren't any emails in your inbox, this episode is going to help you get to Inbox
Zero. You're listening to that music podcast with Bryson Tarbet, the curriculum designer and educational consultant behind that music teacher and the elementary music summit each week, Bryson and his guests will dive into the reality of being an elementary music teacher and how music can truly be transformative in the lives of the students you serve. Show Notes and resources mentioned in this episode can be found at that music teacher.com
you welcome
back to that music Podcast. Today, we're going to talk about a topic that I think we can all need a little help on, which is getting to Inbox Zero. I know that in you know, emails are a necessary evil in a lot of places and a lot of times, and in education, that is one of them. So let's talk about the different emails that you might get when you're logging in the morning. All right, you have your like list all for your school, you know, heaven forbid you're into school, so now you're on to list all as you have your entire administration. You have payroll stuff coming through. You have parents that are emailing you. You have all of the weird, like, spam that's coming in through here, and people trying to steal your information. You have all these different emails that are coming in your inbox. And when you sit down to have your 40 minute planning period, or whatever you end up getting, it can be really easy to all you do to spend the entire time just trying to sort through those emails a lot of times. You know, I've done a lot of work in like, trying to figure out, like, project management stuff or like that. For entrepreneurs, we talk about, like, entrepreneurs, we talk about like, letting, not making your email address, your email account, be your to do list. And I think that's really important for teachers, because we sometimes will log into our email and we'll spend our entire planning period trying to figure this out. You know, Johnny's parent was asking a question about the performance. You know, the the psychologist is sending you a Vanderbilt, things like that. All these different things can become our to do list, rather than what email actually is, which is a communication platform. Today, I'm going to give you a few tips on how to kind of clean out your inboxes and that you can kind of start from scratch if you need to, but also getting you some tips to consistently work through your email so that you can actually get to inbox zero if you're anything like me, like I hate having any inboxes in my any emails in my inbox, even if they're even if they're red, if they're red, they need to go somewhere. If they're still in my inbox, that means I have to do something, and that stresses my brain out. So we're going to go through some topics that are some ideas that I think will give you some help. Tip one is going to be a little weird coming from someone who actually will sends out promotional emails. So please don't, please don't take this too much to heart. But you probably get emails from people and email us that you don't want their information from anymore. I hope that you'll still love your that music teacher emails. But if not, go ahead and hit that unsubscribe button. So scroll down to the bottom of every email that comes from a marketing and there has to be, by law, some way to hit to unsubscribe. Some of these companies are really annoying, and they change the wording, so it's hard to find, but most of them will just say, Click here to unsubscribe. So if you don't want that email address anymore, to hear that email address anymore, scroll the bottom, hit unsubscribe. Boom. Within the next couple days or so, sometimes they take a little longer. You shouldn't get those emails anymore. So that's one way that you can take some information out. One way that I'm going to give you another like little bonus tip, as someone who does run an email, an email account that sends out many emails, is make sure your only response you probably feel like you're getting more emails than you actually are, especially if all of your emails on your are on your phone. For instance, I know there are a lot of you that have that music teacher emails from your personal email and your school email, so whenever I we send out an email, you're probably going to get two emails, which is going to make your inbox even more flooded. So figure out which you know, if you're getting emails from people that you do like but you just feel like you're getting too many and are like duplicate emails. That's probably what it is, is you're probably on their list twice, so figure out which email you want that want to receive those emails on, and then unsubscribe from the other one. That way you don't have to miss out on the emails, but you also feel like you're not going to get bombarded. Another tip that you can do is setting up different keyword triggers, basically or kind of automations. This is one that I hope I don't get in trouble for saying. But early in early on my career, before covid, we were not a one to one district, so my middle school was constantly like sharing Chromebooks, and Chromebooks would get lost. And hey, where's this chromebook cart? And as someone who only spent four periods there and never used the Chromebooks, I didn't care. So I was just so I was getting probably four or five emails a day at least about these Chromebooks, and I just again, I didn't really care. It wasn't what. They weren't related to me. They I wasn't thing. So I created a rule in my Gmail that whenever the subject line included the word Chromebook, it just went right to trash. You might think I'm a terrible person for. That here we are. There are certain things that we're going to need to get communication about, but there are certain things that we're just not going that's not going to be really applicable to us. So you can give a rule, or even if you don't go as far as I did, where you send it to trash, you can make a rule where you send it to, like, a review later folder. That way you can your inbox isn't completely like, full of all these different things. That's another tip that you can use. And this is kind of like a little bonus tip on this one, I guess, if you wanted, if you get like, a, like a newsletter or something from your school that you want to read, but you don't necessarily want to read at that point, you can also set up a trigger there. If there's a certain sender or a certain subject line that's always going to be sending out, like, I know, for instance, we use always some more smore for our newsletters, like our parent facing newsletters, and I wanted to read those, I just didn't want them in my inbox because I wanted to read them when I had time. So that's a rule you could set up so that automatically goes to a folder. It could be again, like a to review folder or look at later folder, so that way it's not flooding your actual inbox. Last week, we're talking a little bit about project management. So whether you use, you know, a project management software like we talked about in that episode, or just a Google Google Tasks, or just a post it note system, or whatever your system is for, like, getting things done, if there's an email that's actually a task. So for instance, if you get an email from your HR department saying that you need to fill out a new W whatever form, delete that email, or archive that email, or put, put that email somewhere that's not in your inbox, but then add that task to whatever task management software you use, or, just like, write it on the post it note, and then you can do it the post it note. So that way your email address, or, you know, there's, you know, that you have to do it, but your email, your inbox, isn't full of all these different things you need to do, because the tasks are on a list somewhere. So that's something that I did really early on. Because again, whenever I felt like there was an email in my inbox, I felt like I needed to be, like, aware of it and like, keep I it was something I needed to do. So by putting that task management, I was using a notebook at the time, by putting that into my notebook, I was able to not have to worry about it, because, again, I'll get it done because I've gotten I was in a habit of, whenever I, you know, you know, a couple times a week I would go into my my notebook and be like, alright, what needs done when I wasn't lesson planning, but I didn't have to worry about it every single time I logged in. So I didn't have that, like, emotional like, oh, gosh, I still have to do this. Because I knew that I get it done. It just wasn't in my email. Another way you can, like, reduce the number of emails you have is be aware of the settings for the different things you use. So for instance, I know like we used, what was that software called? I can't remember what we used, but we used, in the past, we use Class Dojo. So for instance, you might get a an email every time somebody message you, messages you on Class Dojo. If that's what you want, that's totally fine. But if you're in the habit of checking on your phone on Class Dojo, or logging into class JoJo to see those messages. You can turn those emails off if they're not helping you, if they get in the way, or like, Hey, if you're in Class Dojo, but you're added to someone else's class, and you get an email every time somebody else messages, or every every time that teacher posts something, and it's just like, not what you need. You can, you can change those settings too. So be aware of those settings, because sometimes the different apps and things we use just send us so many emails that we don't really care about. For instance, like last week, we talked about how we use Asana here at music teacher for our project management. And the default for that is like it sends you an email. For everything. Someone creates a task, boom, it's an email. Someone finishes a task, boom, it's an email. Someone comments on the test. No one needs those emails, so be aware of the settings on the different things. And that's kind of brings us up to our kind of final point, which is like, do an audit of your inbox. What types of emails are you getting a lot of, what types of emails are stressing you out the most? And figure out if you can make a plan. For instance, if you have this, like, if you have emails that are coming in constantly from parent communication that is just stressing you out, what can you do to be like, hey, I can read this, but I'm going to respond to this like, at the end of the day, or I'm not going to read this until the end of the day so that it doesn't stress me out. Or if you're the opposite, you're like, oh my gosh, I'm going to be worrying at it all day. Only check your email at the beginning of the day so that you can have some time to deal with it and figure it out, and then move from there. So figuring out what works best for you and your system, I think, is going to be best now if you are one of the people that we discussed at the beginning that have 1000s of unread emails, right now, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. You're never going to read those emails. I'm sorry, but you're never going to read through you know, 2000 emails. So my suggestion would you be to this, click Select All clicked mark as red, throw them in a folder or hit archive. Don't delete them, because you might need them. But let's, let's be honest at this point, even if you like, go back a couple weeks and like, or a week or so and look at those emails, as you see, there's anything that's like relevant, but the majority of those emails are so not relevant. They're so old, and, quite frankly, if they need it, they'll reach you out again and they'll send you another email.
It's one of those things you know, like, you're not gonna, you're not gonna read those emails. If you have 6000 unread emails, and I don't know, I don't know about you, but I'm not gonna be going through and. And reading through even, even a couple 100 unread emails. I'm probably just going to look at the most recent ones. Deal with those the way I can deal with those, and then kind of start from scratch so that we can go through follow the other task, I said, to kind of reduce the amount of emails and kind of deal with them more as they come in, so that we don't get super, like, stuck on them, because that is stressful. So I hope you've got some information about how you can get get to inbox zero, and hopefully keep it at Inbox Zero. I know that. You know you're gonna get emails. Emails are going to happen there. It's just one of those things. But whatever you can do to follow, you know, implement some of the strategies that I went through in today's episode, I think it's going to be helpful. Because, let's be honest, we always feel a little bit better when our email in like, when our inbox is, like, under control, and we always feel so much worse when we just have so many emails that we have to deal with, because it becomes this like, oh my gosh, I have this dreaded thing that I have to deal with. Rather than, hey, this is just a way people can get a communication with me, which, again, is what email really is. So with that being said, I hope you've got this some good information that'll help you get closer to Inbox Zero. Please feel free to reach out to us. Send us an email Hello at that music teacher.com that is the best way to get in communication with my team and I if you are inside that music teacher community, we are gonna be diving into Google organization tips and tricks with Teresa Hoover so that like that replay will be in your library if you're listening to this in the future, that replay is already there, and we're going to be really excited, because again, Inbox Zero is great. But what about that Google Drive? Let's be honest, our Google Drives are all pretty crazy too. But anyway, without any further ado, I thank you for being great. Thanks for being awesome, and thank you so much for making a difference in the wise the students that you teach you.
