Email Freedom: Why Inbox Zero Isn't the Answer

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals. I'll see you there. Welcome to Lead On Purpose. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion musician and now executive Coach to global leaders and high performers. Each week I'll publish a solo cast where I'll share my top high performance habits and methodologies to supercharge your life and career. If you enjoy the show, please take a short moment to subscribe and leave a rating and review. I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself. Enjoy the show.

Trigger Warning I'm just about to share something today that might be interesting, but has certainly been triggered a lot of people over the last few days. I made a post and I'm going to let you know what I wrote, but it really triggered people and I want to ask you for a second. Are you one of those hustlers that has to get their email inbox to zero every day? Are you one of those? Are you a slave to your inbox? I can tell you, hand on heart, I am not. In fact, currently I'm sitting just over 26,000 unread emails. Is that intentional? Yes, it is. Absolutely. I don't intend to be a slave to my inbox. And I've spent time working with some of the best leaders in corporate America here in New Zealand, people who are phenomenal athletes and coaches. And I'll tell you what, the amount of anxiety and stress that email checking has given them, they have to set this amount of time a day aside for email. It's phenomenal. And I'll tell you what, it's not worth it. If you are a slave to your inbox, you're doing something wrong. I'm a huge believer in good communication. I talk about SAS communication. Simple, accurate and succinct. Now, most people on email ignore all of that. They usually get quite complex and they waffle a lot. There's generally a lot of inaccuracies and misspellings and you know, there's no succinctness that's like elongated. So I don't tend to want to engage with that. I don't want to spend my days, precious days, on email. When are you at your best? Is it when you're out on your email or are you at your best when you're around other humans and connecting and face to face? Look, don't get me wrong, I know we've got to check our emails, but it's not the be all end all. Like I put up this post saying, hey, are you part of the Inbox Zero crew? Are you going to join me on the Inbox 26,000 crew just for a bit of humor. Now I didn't realize quite what it would start, but on LinkedIn it blew up and I'm going to share a few comments with you. I got such a giggle at some of these. I actually am still a little bit flabbergasted that people got so personal and so worked up about the fact that I wasn't part of Inbox zero. And look, high performance is not about having the best and being perfect at everything. Having an Inbox Zero to me does not define high performance because high performance to me is very simple. It's consistently exceeding norms whilst maintaining healthy relationships and well being. I'll say that again, it's consistently exceeding norms whilst maintaining healthy relationships and well being. There's nothing about emails in there, there's nothing about money in there, there's nothing about beating everyone at all costs in there. I've seen so many people who the outer world think they are high performers and world champions and Olympians and billionaires, but when I spend time with them personally, many of them are struggling, many of them are stressing, anxiety filled. Why? Because they're trying to live up to everyone else's expectations. I'm going to share with you some comments. Some of these were brilliant and interestingly enough.

Many of the positive supportive comments, many of them were from females and many of the angry, upset, borderline attacking comments were from males. So not trying to make a generalization but certainly my experience with this interaction on LinkedIn was that way more males had this mindset of we must be at email 0 and we must check those inboxes. Much more hustle culture. So a couple of very entertaining ones. One was this.

James Laughlin, you are hurting me.

I've seen some things but never that many emails, never before, never again.

And this gentleman finished off by saying it's not about answering them all, but clean screen and clean inbox makes for high level performance. Look, I have to totally disagree. Nonsense. I Know many people who have a zero red emails or zero sorry unread. So it's a blank inbox and they're not performing anywhere near their highest performance. So please out there for anyone, don't connect high level performance with a zero inbox. There's no correlation.

Oh, there's a few more. There's a few absolute crackers. There's one in particular. I was belly laughing. Oh yeah. So one gentleman goes, mine's at zero, I'd hate to see your letterbox. And.

Another guy writes, given the state of his inbox, James probably doesn't even bother with the paperwork after taking a dump. Wow, scraping the barrel, eh? Isn't it interesting when you start to look at human behavior, I find it fascinating. Those were just some of the comments, but there was many positive comments. But some people got really worked up at the fact that I wasn't part of that inbox zero hero club and got quite personal. I just, I find it hilarious that said more about their values and the choice of words they use than anything. But I want to ask you, what's your relationship with your email? Do you work it or does it work you? Look, I can sleep comfortably with 26,000 plus unread emails. Not a problem. Now, some of them, many of them are spam, many of them are companies trying to sell me something. You know, lots of them are. Some of them are emails that come through that I just haven't got back to. But I know if it's really important, they will get back to me, send me another email, or they will call me or text me or find some way to communicate. And I feel okay with that because I simply don't have the capacity to get back to every single person. And that's the nature of life. And if I did get back to every single person, which I could, I know I'd have to spend way less time with my family. I know I'd have to spend way less time preparing good food. I know I'd have to spend way less time.

Out for a run. I know I'd have to spend way less time with the things I love doing. And I'd spend way more time sitting in front of a screen, way more time sitting up late at night. That to me is not high performance, it's not fulfilling. So to me it's about striking a balance of am I getting back to crucial mission critical emails and am I able to say no to the emails that really are need a response? For example, I get cc'd in on a lot of emails generally. Rule of thumb, those emails don't need me. I don't get back to those. Why? Because they don't really require that of me. So I want you to think a little bit about the emails you're getting back to. Are they mission critical? Do you need to respond? Take a moment to just think about your email as a tool that you work. It's not the other way around. It should never have control of you. So, a couple of things, couple of tips. One, don't check your email first thing in the morning. Two, don't send late night emails. If you do, schedule them to go out, even on iPhone. You can do that now. Schedule them to go out the next morning at 8 o'. Clock. You don't want to send a message to people that you're that leader that sits up all night and gets up super early. And yes, I used to be that leader. And yes, I used to be a slave to my emails. Was I happy? No. Was I unhealthy? Yes. Was I more stressed? Yes. Look, I'm so passionate about this and I'm so passionate that people don't spend their precious, beautiful, sublime days on this earth attached to their emails. I promise you, if you do get radically obsessed with Email zero, there's going to be other things in your life that you miss out on. So start asking yourself, is this mission critical? Can I set my inbox up a little bit better so I know what's mission critical and what's not? Can I set up VIP senders so that I can check in on those first and foremost? So whatever you're doing, I want you to think about your emails. I want you to think about what works for you. Not for society, not for the keyboard warriors. And man, oh man, those comments were just the beginning. You should jump on my LinkedIn and check. Check out some of the other ones. Priceless. So, folks, thank you for checking in today. Thanks for again, always giving me your feedback and your support. You know, subscribing to the channel, sharing it with friends. I sincerely, sincerely appreciate it. We've got some amazing guests coming up for you in the next few weeks and for me to keep bringing you amazing guests, I really do need your support, you know. So if you're on YouTube, hit that subscribe button, please. If you're listening on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your audios, please leave me a rating review, subscribe to it or follow it, depending on what platform you use. It's gonna hugely help me to get more great guests to connect with you. So thank you so much. Don't let that inbox control you. Get out there and lead your life on purpose.

Thanks for tuning in today and investing in your own personal leaders. Please hit that subscribe button and I'd love if you'd leave me a rating and review. I've got some amazing guests lined up for you in the coming weeks. And leaders, it's that time to get out there and lead your life on purpose.