November 13, 2025

Reader question re: When do you process email?

Friend-of-the-list Nat Lipschitz replied to yesterday’s message to ask (shared with permission):

When do you check and reply to email?

Good question!

The short answer is:

When I feel like it.

The long answer has a number of moving parts:

A long time ago, I stopped accepting email from clients. First, I moved client communication to Basecamp. When Slack came along, I moved them to that. This took some time, but it is a critical piece of maintaining my sanity. If I had to check my inbox every time Gmail went DING just in case it was an urgent message from a client, I’d be in a constant state of distraction and would never get anything done.
This isn’t email specific, but speaking of DINGs, my phone is always in “do not disturb” mode. If it ever makes a sound, it’s because I’ve messed up a setting, I set an alarm, or there’s a tornado alert in my area. I don’t know how people can get anything done with their phones dinging all the time. (Happy to talk more about my notification strategy if people are interested.)
I don’t check and respond to email at the same time. Why? Because the mental states required for those two activities are very different. I have a “triage mode” that requires no creative energy, where I quickly go through and archive anything that obviously doesn’t need a reply, and I have a “reply mode” that requires creative energy (sometimes a lot) and takes more time.
For context, I’ll share some numbers. Yesterday, I got 111 emails, which I think is about average for me. I probably only saw 40ish of them because of filters I have set up. I archived 31 of those without opening them, and replied to 9. 7 of the 9 required only a 1-line reply, but the last 2 took some effort. Total time spent on email yesterday was probably 30 minutes, 90% of which was devoted to one of the replies. And again... I triaged and replied at two different times of day.
I don’t keep track of when I triage my email, but I think I usually do it first thing in the morning, and usually only once a day. I know everyone says “don’t check your email first thing in the morning,” and I agree, but I’m not really checking it, I’m triaging it. I don’t actually read (i.e., get sucked into) any of them when I’m in triage mode.
When I have to really think about a reply, I usually do it around lunch time, and ideally, when I don’t have any more meetings for the day. This mode feels luxurious, and I love it. Often, these sorts of replies turn into the inspiration for the daily email, a course, or even an idea for a book.

That’s probably enough for now... thanks again to Nat for asking!

Any questions? Hit reply and ask 😎👍

Yours,

—J