Inbox & Communication
Inbox & Communication
Catching Up After Vacation Without Losing a Day
1,200 emails, 14 Slack channels, three docs out of date.
You're back. The laptop opens to 1,200 emails, 14 Slack channels, three docs out of date. You pour the coffee, crack your knuckles, and start at the top of the inbox: message one of twelve hundred.
By lunch you've read four hundred emails and feel busy. You've also missed the one decision made in a Slack thread you don't follow, and you're still working off the strategy doc that was current the day you left. The afternoon goes the same way. Day one back is gone, and you haven't caught up; you've just paddled.
The pile wasn't the problem. The plan was. You treated a week of accumulated change as a reading assignment, when it's really a search problem, and search is the part you can hand off.
The fix doesn't take the morning. It takes a few well-aimed questions.