5 Myths You Might Believe About Your Work Email [Episode 77]

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You’re listening to episode number 77 of the secondary science simplified podcast. I have loved hearing from those of you who did the action step last week in Episode 76, of asking yourself the questions and printing out your responses so that you have those for reference come next school year. And like I predicted would happen. So many of you acknowledged how much time and energy you spent on email. But that you also just don’t see how you can make any changes there, you can’t imagine it looking different or being any less than it is. And so, I want you to know that you are in luck, because I am a recovering email audit. And that’s not because I liked doing email by any means. No, I dislike email greatly. I just felt this compulsive energy of like, I must check and respond immediately and put out every fire ASAP. And I felt that way 24/7. And it has literally all taken me years to get over this, and do have a different mindset around email. And I just want you to have faster results in this area than me. So I’m going to share with you five myths or honestly five lies that you might be believing about your work, email. These are things that I told myself were true. And then I hear people say all the time, and now kind of on the other side of this mindset shift, I realized that they are not true. And five practical ways to combat them. Y’all. I’m not gonna lie. This is a good one. I just want to know, are you ready? Are you ready to unearth the subconscious lies that you might not even realize you are believing and to enter your summer with a much healthier outlook on your work email. Well, if you’re not ready, actually, you know I’m ready for you. So let’s dive right in. This is secondary science simplified a podcast for secondary science teachers who want to engage their students and simplify their lives. I’m Rebecca joiner from it’s not rocket science. As a high school science teacher turned curriculum writer, I am passionate about helping other science teachers love their jobs, serve their students, and do it all in only 40 hours a week. Are you ready to rock the time spent in your classroom and actually have a life outside of it? You are in the right place teacher friend. Let’s get to today’s episode.

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Okay, so ironically, before we talk about email, I want to remind you that we’re in our summer podcast PD series, which is free PD on the pod all summer long. And I have a calendar, you can grab if you give me your email address, which is that isn’t rocket science classroom.com/podcast PD. But I want I’m telling you this because I want to encourage you to put your personal email into that form so that you don’t miss any of the emails this summer about our free PD, because most of you, I know, put in your work email, which is great, but I don’t want you on your work email this summer. Okay, so then you won’t be seeing these. So I know this is kind of ironic for me to ask you to give me your email address. But just in case, you don’t want to miss the weekly emails about the free podcast PD, you would want to give me your personal email. Okay, so I’ll put that link in the show notes as well. But now, more importantly, than me caring about you getting my emails about the podcast, I care about you having healthy email boundaries. So if I need to sacrifice you seeing my content this summer, I’m fine with that for you to have a better balance with your email. Okay, so here’s how we’re going to handle this episode, I’m going to tell you five myths that I think most of us believe about our email. So these are things that we think are true, but they are not true. Okay, I’m going to try to debunk each of these for you. And then at the end, I’m going to give you practical tips, five very, very practical tips for how to walk away right now and approach your inbox entirely default really, okay. So first, we got to shift your mindset from this being an essential thing to doing this job well, okay, and then we’ll talk about how to deal with it. So first myth is you might believe I must be available. And for many of you, you think I must be available 24/7. And I say this because I used to feel this way. And I think you most likely especially feel this way because COVID and our pandemic time several years ago really, really blurred the boundaries of work and home life because work came home to you and you were working from home and kind of balancing this virtual teaching aspect. A lot of us who may have had boundaries at one point lost them, and it may have been a lot harder. Now when students have been so used to having access to you 24/7, or maybe your admin has expected for you to be available 24/7 to balance that now that we’re back to more of how school is traditionally looked prior to COVID. And here’s the deal, y’all, this is a lie, you absolutely do not need to be available. 24/7. And actually, it can be a legal issue if you are available. 24/7 way back, I think it was like around episode 5253. I had my friend Lauren tingle from counselor click on the pod. She’s a high school counselor. And she and I used to work together. And she’s one of my best friends also. And she and I talked about this because she said this is something that they learned as counselors like, it can be dangerous to a child if they think that you’re always available, and they send you an emergency email expecting you to respond to them, because you always do and then you don’t. Okay, so we have to set boundaries, and train students that we actually aren’t always available so that in a real emergency, they don’t go to us. And so that’s why really there’s one thing you do right now, I want you to delete email off of your phone, you do not need your work email on your phone. You especially don’t need it this summer, you might try to argue with me during the school year, I still don’t think you need it on your phone then. But that’s what I want to challenge you to do to combat this first myth is delete it from your phone. Because here’s the deal. Here’s where Myth number two comes in, you believe? Well, there might be an emergency, Rebecca, y’all. If it is a true emergency, they should call 911, not you. And I know I’m coming off at this harsh. But my husband literally has had to say this to me, like six years ago, I will never forget being in bed. He’s trying to fall asleep. And I’ve got the light on because I’m trying to respond an email and I’m stressed level midnight about it. And he held my face. And he’s like this is not an emergency. If it was they should have called 911. And so I’m saying this to you with some harshness coming on the other side of it, I see the light on the other side of the life, you could have not completely owned by your email, and I want you to have that life. Okay. I know you think there might be an emergency. But if it’s a real one, it’s a 911 issue, not a huge issue. And another thing I’ll say too is, other people’s emergencies do not have to become your emergencies. The student that forgot their binder at school and his panic, and so they’re emailing you at 10pm. Because they don’t know what to do because they can’t do their homework. That’s their emergency is not yours. And if you’re someone like me, if you’re an empath, you absorb other people’s feelings like that. And then it’s really hard for you because you’re carrying that burden that’s not yours to bear. Okay, so that second myth of there might be an emergency, I want to combat that by telling you, you are not an ambulance driver, this is not in your zone of responsibility for you to reply to every seeming emergency. Okay. Myth number three, you might be believed by your email, you might think by Rebecca, I need to be in my inbox multiple times a day, because my admin sends critical messages there. And so that’s why it’s become such a big time set for me. Now, I’m not going to go on a tangent here, even though I could but this is just so wild to me that your admin wants you to be at your computer checking on your email multiple times a day, rather than caring for the students in your classroom. Like, honestly, as a science teacher, this is a safety hazard for you to be expected to be checking your computer during every single class period, when you have students to be protecting, that are working with Bunsen burners and chemicals. Like this is a safety hazard for you to be expected you that you can get on for your 10 Second attendance admission, but going through email stuff that gets into a couple minute job, and that is not safe. So I would honestly tell my admin like, hey, this isn’t safe. If this is the only way I’m going to be expected to get critical messages is this way, it’s not safe for science teachers. And it’s not what’s best for students. I just think it’s an absurd thing. The schools that I have been in in the past, one was really small. So literally, if there was a critical message, we had an admin, like, come around and just straight up, come to our door and tell us, but the other one, they just came over the intercom and would tell us or they would come over the intercom and say, Hey, teachers, we just sent you something, you need to check your email. Like the expectation for us was not just to be in our inbox all the time. I just think that’s so unrealistic and absurd. But I know you may not have control over that. So what I would do if you have no control over this, or you don’t feel comfortable telling your admin like, Hey, this is a safety hazard for me to be in my inbox all the time checking to see if I got something from you. I would set up a rule in your inbox. You can do this in any Gmail inbox. I’m assuming you can do it in others too. But you set up a rule so that all emails that come from a certain email address like your admin or the admin secretary or whatever, they go into a certain folder. And so what I do is I have 1000 folders in my inbox because I like to keep my inbox at zero which means I have to sort things all the time. And I have to do different folders at the top. And they both have little underscore. So that keeps them at the top of my list. And one is like bills that I need to pay. And then the other is emails I really need to respond to. And you could do something like that with your admin and have one that’s like this came from Admin, and you set up a rule. So those emails, don’t go to your inbox, they go directly to that folder, and then you’ll see that folder kind of becomes bold, when there’s something in it. And so then, you know, just to check that. And the other tool I recommend to kind of combat this is I have recently discovered this Chrome extension called inbox when ready, and I will link it in the show notes for you. But it is free. And what happens is, is you just download this extension. And then basically, when you open your inbox, it’s like, it’s all kind of like blanked out, like you can’t see anything. And then there’s a little button that’s like, do you want to see your inbox, and if so, then it’ll pull up your inbox. But the reason I love this is I can pull up Gmail, and it looks blank. And then I can just go to my admin folder on the left and only see the emails that got pulled into that folder, because I set up a rule for those emails all go in this one folder. And then when I have time later, to see all the other emails, you know, from parents or students, I could go into the actual email inbox and click the inbox when ready, tab and it’ll but the emails pop up. I love love, love this extension, so much it is free. There are like additional features if you pay for it. But you don’t need those. One of the only things that you may not like but I actually like is the free version requires that they put in your email signature, like at the bottom of all of your signature, it’ll say I’m using inboxes when ready to like help me maintain focus while I work. And I don’t mind that, like I’m kind of like that little notice they put in there. If you buy the paid version, it’ll delete that. But I think I’m fine people knowing that I’m trying to focus. So I really recommend that because that will combat this lie that you have to be in there 24/7 So that you can see critical messages from your admin. No, you don’t, you set up a rule that all your admin emails go to this one folder, and then you get this inbox from ready extension that’s free. And that’ll keep you from having to look at everything. And you can only check that while you’re doing attendance, which is like a one eyeball peek at it just to see if it’s bolded. And then if not, you move on. Okay, that will save you so much time. The fourth myth, I find that a lot of teachers believe that I did too, is that I spend at least an hour doing email every day, that’s another never have time to do XYZ, like you’re like I’m always behind on my lesson plans. Because I’m spending at least an hour doing email or you know, I’m always having to bring work home to grade. Because I’m spending so much time on email, it says nit that, I can’t do these other things I’d much rather do I’d much rather prioritize or I can’t have work life balance. Because I have to spend an hour more on email every day, this must stop. You cannot be spending an hour on your email every day. If this is you, you need to set a timer for every email that you do. And you need to give it two minutes of your time. If you’re doing two minutes of your time. Hopefully you’re not getting more than 15 to 20 emails a day. That means you’re going to fall within the 30 to 45 minutes of time on email a day. That is plenty of time when you’re looking at your entire workday and all the other responsibilities you have. That is a very reasonable amount of time to spend on email, anything over an hour is way too much time on email, in my opinion, for your job description and all the other responsibilities you have. If you think your response is going to take longer than two minutes to read an email and respond to it. Honestly, it should probably be an in person conversation, then, if an email has several paragraphs, and we’ll get to this in a minute with the practical tips. And you’re going to have to write several paragraphs to respond to it. It probably should be a phone call or an in person conference. Okay? So that is a lie that you can’t achieve work life balance, or you can’t spend more time on your lesson plans or you can’t get ahead on XYZ, because you’re spinning, you need at least an hour in your inbox every day. Let’s get over that. Let’s let go of that. Okay. And then the last lie I often hear and the one that I told myself is myth number five and that’s But Rebecca they need me. The people need me the students need me these parents need me my admin needs me my coworkers do you need my department chair needs me. So they’re emailing me because they need me. Okay, here’s the deal. They need you because you’ve trained them to need you, rather than equipping them to find answers on their own. And I say this with all of the love and respect for you in the world, y’all because I did the exact same thing. I trained myself to be needed by other people. And I kept coming up with the answers and solutions for them rather than equipping them to find them themselves. And thus I constantly was chained to my inbox. And I think truly one of the first steps to having work life balance and only working 40 hours a week is to get the inbox under control and to get your Your email the amount of time you’re spending on it under control. Okay, I think we especially have a hard time with this when it comes to parents, because typically, like 95% of our interaction with parents is only an email. And what we do is we train them that we’re always available. And so they assume that we always are and they expect to hear from us all of the time. Okay. And so this is where I have a bunch of practical tips for you that are going to come in. Okay, so you have your five things you might be believing you might be believing I must be available 24/7, there might be an emergency, I need to check my inbox multiple times a day, because admin sends critical messages there, or I can’t have work life balance, because I spent at least a minimum, I need a minimum of an hour in my inbox every day. And then lastly, but they need me, Rebecca, they need me. Okay, those are all lies that we have been conditioned to believe are true. Now let’s talk about how to fight these lies with five practical tips. Okay, first, y’all set a schedule and stick to it, do what works best for you. But this is what worked best for me. I checked email. First thing when I got to school, I train my students that I don’t tutor in the mornings, I’m just I need more coffee than I can get before I can tutor them. So I don’t do tutoring. First thing, I would get to school early though, so I could check my email, I get 30 minutes in the morning to check my email I build in that time. And here’s how I handle it, I do a quick scan and look for all the quick Easter apply to all the ones that are just like admin with an announcement or something or maybe a co worker that can just send off a little thing or, you know, the parents that are gonna probably email you the longer things I do the quick ones first, then, with the remaining time, I’d look at the ones that are longer if I open it, and it’s an email multiple paragraphs, and I know that I don’t have two to four minutes to respond to it. Really, I think it should be two minutes or under every email. But I’m just trying to give you a little bit of grace here for those longer ones. I don’t read it then. But I go ahead and I plan on saving it for the end of the day, which is when I do my second check of the day, I do one last kind of peek in the inbox before I leave for the day. So 30 minutes, the beginning of the day, 30 minutes max at the end of the day, y’all but I’m really hoping you’re more spending like 1515 on these, okay. And I saved for the end the day because here’s why I mentioned this in a previous episode, but anxiety begs action, if you read an email with a 3.5 paragraph essay in it, and then you don’t have time to respond to it right, then you’re gonna feel anxious about it all day, and you’re gonna be thinking about it and ruminating on it, you’re gonna be distracted, okay, and you’re not gonna be able to serve your students well. So I don’t even look at the emails, when I would see certain parents come in, I’m like, I’m not even going to look at that right now I’ll save it for the end of the day, where I can write down a response and then go home, I don’t want to be thinking about this all day. Okay, so I really recommend doing that. And then again, like I said, my second check would be before I left for the day, and this is when I would answer longer emails, and I would literally all set a timer for two minutes, I would open it up, set the timer on my phone, if I realize I’m not gonna be able to respond to it, I just instead of writing a response, I say, I think this would make a great phone call or an in person conference, and I bring them in. And I know you’re like, but that takes so much time. Here’s my thing about in person conferences, oftentimes you only have to meet with someone once in person. Once they meet you in person, they put a face to who you are, you become humanized for them. They realize how much you care about their student, they get to see your classroom, how it’s organized, where you have your due date, board, etc, you can kind of have this bonding experience. And then I find any other contact I usually have to have with this parents throughout the year is often a lot shorter. So I really find those parents that are getting really long winded on you, that’s the best mode of action, it takes longer on the front end at the parent conference in person. But it will save you so much time and headache on the back end. Now alternative option is to do a phone call, I tend to prefer email mainly because I like to have all correspondence with the difficult people in writing. But this is why I love Google Voice. So if you didn’t know this Google Voice, it’s free. And you get a phone number through them. And you can call anyone from your phone through their app. So it’ll come through from that phone number, not like your personal phone number. It’s like your Google phone number. But you can also just use it on your computer. And you can even record the calls. And you can get transcripts of them too. Now, depending on the state you live in, you may have to get consent from someone before you record the call. But that could be even something like you email them and say, Hey, I think this be easier to talk about over the phone. Can I call you at this time you tell them when is best for you to call them? If so, will you give me your phone number? Please note that all phone calls are recorded and you just put a thing in there. And obviously if they then answer your call, then they are consenting to that because they’ve seen that. Or you can have something they sign at the beginning the year that lets them know that all phone calls will be recorded. But I’ll link an article in the show notes that explains how you can record calls using Google Voice. I really, really recommend that that’s going to be these ones that are going to require more than two minutes It’s okay. Another thing I will say practically, so you’re gonna set a schedule. And then I want you to not respond to anyone ever more than once a day, one email per day. Okay, so if you respond to Lesley in the morning, and then when you go to do your one last check before you leave for the day, and you see Leslie’s already written back, don’t even look at it. You’ve already talked to Leslie today, you do not talk to her again, today, you can talk to her again tomorrow. I do not want to train them to think that I’m available multiple times a day, I want them to know, I’m only available once a day. But here’s another thing I will say too. I do like to respond to things within 24 hours, which is why I do think it’s good to check you know, once a day, a school day, I do not check on the weekends. But here’s my one caveat to that is if you are emotionally triggered by an email, you can draft a response if you really want to, but then I want you to give it space before you press that send button. So you can come back to it maybe 12 hours later with a second set of eyes that are a lot fresher, and less emotional. Okay, so that’s my one caveat, do try to reply to people within one school day. But if it’s a very emotional email, please, please, please take more time. You will always respond better when you have more time on those emails. Okay. But again, circle back to this myth. Other people’s emergencies don’t have to become yours. Just because they email you in an absolute panic doesn’t mean you have to reply ASAP on their timeline. Okay, especially if you’re getting emotional about the email. Third thing I want to practically recommend, which I already mentioned, is that inbox when ready. Again, it’s free, but I just love it. I think it’s so worth trying. I think it’s just one of my favorite tools I found in a long time tech tools. And so I highly recommend it. For them I recommend is having a script when you reply to emails to parents, especially if you have not, you need to listen to episode 70, which is with my guest, Zack Matson, who I brought back, it is so good. He gives you such a great example of this. And so a lot of these tips come from him and our conversation. But my basic script for any parent email is one I always start positive. Even if I got the craziest, crazytown email of all time, I start positive with something personal that I love about the student or seeing the student so that they know that I know who their student is, and I care about them. The second thing is and Zack mentioned this too, is we stick to the facts, okay? Especially these parents are very emotional because it’s their children, it’s their babies, okay? We do not engage with their emotion because you cannot reason with emotion. Okay, if you believe you can, I would love for you to fly to my house right now and try to talk to my three year old daughter when she can’t get her socks on. Right? She’s unreasonable when she’s emotional. So you stick to the facts, even if they send you 10 points that they’ve made, but only five of them are based in logic. In fact, you only respond to five of them, you just don’t even respond to others, okay, or else then it just gets I’m guilty of this getting really defensive. So stick to the facts. Don’t give any assumptions either. Even if you’re like, Well, I think this is happening because of this friendship that they have with the students been really distracting for them. Don’t even say it. Unless you have data, don’t say it stick to the facts. Third thing I want to say is emphasize how you can help but within your boundaries. So outline facts say this is how I’m able to help but don’t feel like you need to go above and beyond to do something that is not something you’re capable of doing. Like if this person is demanding private tutoring, or I even had a lot of AP ba students that their parents wanted to pay me to tutor than after hours like above and beyond. And they I think they were trying to be like, I’m willing to do it and I’ll pay you because I know this is outside of your what you’re required you as a teacher. So like they were acknowledging that. But again, like it’s outside of my boundaries, and to me, it just felt wrong to have like some students paying me and others not. So offer what you are willing to help with. It doesn’t you don’t have to hang the moon for them. Okay, but you are willing to help. This is when you already have set tutoring hours. This is when you know, this is what you put on your website. This is your YouTube channel, your lecture videos, whatever it may be that already exists. Okay, fourth tip with your script, do not engage the crazy, I already said that. You have to be the common rational 1/5 Don’t take it personally. It is rarely about you. And I know that’s hard to hear because it’s gonna seem so, so personal. But I swear 90% of the time, it’s something that’s going on in them that has made them respond and react so aggressively towards you. So please do not take it personally. I will also say I’ve never regretted being kinder. I’ve never looked back at a situation where someone was aggressive or crazy towards me. And I regret being kind to them. Okay, but I have regretted being harsher or more defensive than was actually necessary. So when in doubt, I choose to be kinder than maybe I feel or want to be. And another rule of thumb, which Zack mentioned is if you’re ever questioning whether or not you should say something, don’t say it. The answer is Don’t say it. Okay, and Again, like if you’re having a reaction to the email, feeling really defensive, really wanting to seek justice in the email where you feel like you’re being wronged by this person, you can write a response, but do not send it, wait a day come back to it, you most likely will come back a lot kinder to it, and be able to respond more level headed. I know they say like, don’t let the sun set on your anger. I think you should. When it comes to emails, I think you should let the sun set on your anger. And then come back after a good night’s sleep when you’re not exhausted and try to respond in a different way. And then my last practical tip is set up an auto responder at a minimum for school vacations. If you’ve never set up an auto responder for summer break, now’s the time to your friend, you need to do this. Also, you can set this up to go all the time. You can have an auto responder all the time, you can have one on for all the weekends of the school year, put one on every Friday, turn it off every Monday when you come back. But at a minimum, I want you to put this on for every school, break your Thanksgiving, break your winter, break your fall, break your three day weekend in January, any break you have, I want you to set up an auto responder, I do think all the time can be a little annoying. But if you want to do that have on on 24/7 Just have it say like an auto responder email. It’s like, oh, I’m teaching right now engaging young minds in the wonderful world of science. If you are looking for help, though, with XYZ, you can check ABC and like link them to your website link tell them you know, I update grades every 24 hours. So you can check the Gradebook if you have a question about a grade, you know, and then give them a couple of examples. And then say if you have a different question, I will get back to you when I do my once a school day email check. And I would make sure I say my once a school day email check that can be your all the time responder. But you can also just use something similar on weekends are like again, those vacation times off that just say hi, thank you so much for reaching out. I do not check my email outside of school hours. I’m currently unplugged when it’s a holiday. I’ve unplugged for time with my family right now. And I hope you are enjoying some as well. I will respond to all emails when I returned on Monday, August 5, blah, blah, blah, okay. Also, if you can’t imagine doing that, this summer, if you’re like I cannot unplug all year, Rebecca, I cannot do it. Then set up your auto responder and say in it, I will check emails these three days, you know, and pick your three days or I will check email every Monday this summer. And that is the only time I will be checking it and then leave it on and then you will feel so much better about not like feeling like you’re neglecting your inbox knowing that people are getting a response from you. They’re getting a response immediately from you. It’s just not a live response. And that’s okay. Okay, so I really want to encourage you to do that. Okay, so if I had to pick just one action step for you today, out of all the things I just said, because I know I just went on a rampage. But I’m like, so, so passionate about you guys having good email boundaries, because like, again, at one point in my life and a long point in my life, I was horrible at this, and I just never could see the other side. And now that I’m on the other side of having good boundaries, my life has literally changed. And I just want you to experience that transformation too. Okay, so of all these things, my number one action step free today would be set up your auto responder right now for summer. And if you’re like one on on summer break yet, you can go ahead and type it out and save it and set the date that it’s going to start. And if you want to bonus actions that download that inbox when ready or download Google Voice, if those ideas intrigued you and kind of see how they work and how you can maybe use those next year. And I will link all that stuff in my show notes, which you can find at it’s not rocket science classroom.com/episode 77 And if you set your auto responder up, or if you try and Moxon ready, I would love to hear and so if you’re on Instagram, I would love it if you would tag me at it’s dot not dot rocket dot science. So I can just cheer you on it like makes me so pumped up to see other people setting boundaries in their inbox. And so I would love to encourage you over there if that’s something you choose to do. And I hope you’ve enjoyed our first few weeks so far of the summer podcast PD. And if you can think of right now a friend who needs to set some work email boundaries, share this episode with them, even if they’re not a secondary science teacher. Or better yet, if you’ve ever accidentally replied all to staff on email. Now, it’d be a great time to make that mistake again and share this email and be like, Oh, I didn’t mean to send it to everybody. But maybe people will listen that need to hear it and stop emailing you 24/7 that are working with you within your school, this would be a great way to just kind of passively slipped the episode into their inbox. But regardless is if you take that seriously or not. I hope you take the rest of this seriously. And you see those five myths for what they are truly myths and lies that we believe about our email and I hope this helped you to see another way is truly possible.

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All right, teacher friends. That wraps up today’s episode. If you’re looking for an easy way to start simplifying your life as a secondary science teacher had to It’s not rocket science. classroom.com/challenge to grab your classroom reset challenge. And guess what? It’s totally free. Thanks so much for tuning in and I’ll see you here next week. Until then, I’ll be cheering you on, teacher friend!