No Apologies for My Email

In the age of COVID-19, I'm struggling with keeping up with email. (I mean, I'm struggling with other things too, but this is one specific and tangible struggle.) I have some strategies that I use for managing my inbox, but they aren't always working these days. I'll share a few of my strategies here, but also a nugget of truth that I think I've finally settled on for not feeling guilty about struggling to keep up.

I rarely achieve inbox zero, but because I use my email inbox as a key part of my workflow, I do generally try to keep my inbox to fewer than 30 items whenever possible. I use folders to sort messages I need to hang on to--"department business," and "academic affairs," and "church stuff," and "IMPORTANT" are all folders I use regularly, in addition to a dedicated folder for each course I'm teaching. And I'm learning to delete with abandon--how did I get on so many mailing lists that are only tangentially related to me and my interests anyway? If it's not something I am going to need to keep, into the trash it goes. All of this helps remove the clutter.

I learned in grad school that I had to compartmentalize my day, or I would wind up ping-ponging back and forth between things and losing productive work time. One strategy I practiced then--and have recently reinstated--is closing my email for big chunks of the day. That little pinging email icon with the numerical counter of unread messages is designed to grab our attention. Closing the program and only opening it when I have the time to dedicate to answering messages helps manage this distraction.

My general rule is that I plan to respond to messages within 24 hours, and I almost always am able to do this. I will say that I prioritize: if it's a message from a current student or from a colleague about something time-sensitive, I do try to answer those ones as soon as possible. If it's from someone outside the institution, or something that is less time critical...I try to hold off on those ones if possible.

Setting up a few times a day to read and respond to email does help. One approach I've tried to practice in the past and still mostly successfully achieve is the 2-minute rule: when I'm "doing email," if I can respond to a message in less than 2 minutes, I will do it right now and not put it off until later. This helps free up space in the inbox, and thus in my mental workflow as well.

As useful as these strategies have been, however, I still am finding that I struggle to keep up with the email avalanche from time to time. There are still some messages that get lost in the shuffle, and then I find them days later--far longer than my normal 24-hour window. I hate this feeling, and my first impulse it to send an apologetic email in response.

But here's the nugget of truth, and the associated strategy I've been using lately. Instead of an "I am SO sorry...!" opening to my tardy email in response, I've changed up my language a bit. I am now starting those emails with, "Thanks for your patience with my slower-than-normal response." 

Because this is the truth: I think we are all up to our eyebrows in keeping up, and I am finding it relatively easy to extend grace to other people who don't get back to me as quickly as I would like...because I'm so grateful when they extend this grace to me as well. Opening with a "thanks!" message instead of an apology is my way of signaling this.

I hope that we all can normalize this. Certainly there is a sense of professionalism and responsibility in getting back to people as soon as possible. But in the age of COVID? Let's make it "no apologies needed."

Image by Stephen Phillips - Hostreviews.uk.com via Unsplash

Writing, Teaching, Thinking, Working

Thanks to the many of you, dear readers, who commented (via Twitter, Facebook, text, email, hallway conversation, or carrier pigeon) in response to my writing project here on the blog last month. (If you weren't reading along, no worries! I'm glad you're here now. If you want to take a look at that project, it was a series of posts offering tips for teaching at a distance. You can read the whole series here if you like: Distance Teaching Tips Series.) This is my 33rd post on the blog for 2020. 18 of those came last month, trying to get myself disciplined to write again. 

It's amazing to think about how this year has unfolded. 2020 has just been a tough year in so many ways. I thought that with the time at home on quarantine in the spring, I would have written a lot. I just didn't have it in me. It was hard work just to keep up with the teaching.

Then I thought I might do some more writing this summer. Nope--I was busy with teaching online in our Master of Ed program and doing some consulting work offering PD sessions to help K-12 teachers prepare for teaching at a distance this year.

And then came the end of summer, with the scramble to prepare for hy-flex teaching this fall. Oof. It's been demanding, friends, to say the least. Don't get me wrong...my students are amazing. My courses are going well. My colleagues are incredibly supportive. But I'm tired. all. the. time.

Teaching is hard work under the best of circumstances. I know none of my fellow educators are surprised to hear me say that. But I am often amazed at how non-educators think that our profession is some sort of walk in the park. And this year? The emotional work of teaching is all the more demanding. All the extra demands for...everything...just feels like a burden. I'm SO grateful for what I get to do, so I don't want this to sound like complaining. I'm not. But I'm acknowledging that this has been hard--really hard. And I know my students are feeling that way too; several have said as much. They are grateful to be here, they are glad to be on campus, making the efforts to do all the things that have to be different this year to make it happen. But several have named it: it's hard, and they are pining for the "normal."

I am too.

One of the joys in my work as a professor is that I am expected to think, and research, and write, in addition to my teaching. I love this stuff. But this year, the thinking, and researching, and writing feels sort of superfluous. Or at least, maybe it's less important than the teaching? I'm thinking a lot, of course. But so much of my thinking ends up circling back to thinking about my courses, about my students, about how to help them, and support them, and encourage them, and how to not get buried in the work.

Ah, the work. Working in academia is kind of weird. The work is almost all cognitive, and emotional. Teaching is such public work, but intensely personal as well. And as I'm thinking about what has just blurred out of my keyboard in the past 15 minutes here, maybe this is a great example of what I'm doing. I just had to get this feeling out of my head and heart in some way, and so the words spilled out into pixels here on the blog.

I guess I'll title this post something about writing, and teaching, and thinking, and working. This semester they all feel so interrelated--even more than normal.

I don't know if I'll even push this one on social media now that it's written. This one might actually just be for me.