The Principal's Handbook

The Principal's Email Detox
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In today's episode, I want to talk about the principal's email detox. That's all coming up next on the Principal's handbook.
Welcome to the Principal's Handbook, your go-to resource for principals looking to revamp their leadership approach and prioritize self-care. I'm Barb Flowers, a certified life coach with eight years of experience as an elementary principal. Tune in each week as we delve into strategies for boosting mental resilience, managing time effectively, and nurturing overall wellness.
From tackling daily challenges to maintaining a healthy work life balance. We'll navigate the complexities of school leadership together. Join me in fostering your sense of purpose as a principal and reigniting your passion for the job. Welcome to a podcast where your wellbeing is the top priority.
Welcome back to the podcast. Today we are talking about the principal's email detox, this is such an important topic because every principal that I talk to struggles with email overwhelm.
If [00:01:00] you're a school administrator and you're constantly checking your inbox at 9:00 PM or you wake up at 5:00 AM and you are checking your email, this episode is specifically for you. We're going to explore a game changing resource I created.
It's a free resource you can download called the Principal's Email Detox. What this resource does is it really helps you as a school leader reclaim your time and sanity when it comes to email. So I wanna paint a familiar picture and see if you can relate to this, because I used to be this person.
It's Friday evening and you are at your child's soccer game, but your attention is divided because you're scrolling through work emails on your phone. Or maybe it's Sunday afternoon and your family's in the house relaxing together, and instead of being present with them, you are mentally at school, you're responding to emails, you're thinking about what's going to be happening in the next week, and you are just, you can't wait until Monday morning because you have so many things on your mind already.
Does this sound [00:02:00] familiar?
If I am ever scrolling on my phone and not completely present with them, they will call me out. If I'm at a sporting event and looking at my phone and not watching them, they will call me out. They see it. And so I'm really conscientious about this because. I don't want my kids to see me on the phone all the time, but I think so many principals deal with this where they feel like they need to constantly check their email on their phone or, you get out your computer and check your email there.
So this constant connection to our email, it really does take a serious toll on your wellbeing because every time you check your email at home or even at work, then you're thinking about whatever you just saw. When I talk to many school leaders, email management is consistently very high on one of the biggest challenges for how they use their time.
That's why today I wanted to talk to you about my free resource, the principles, email, detox, this practical guide offers a straightforward approach to breaking email addiction, and I do think it's an addiction. You wanna see what's [00:03:00] in your email that so many principles really do face 24 7.
So before we talk about this solution and talk about some ways that you can actually detox from your email, I wanna acknowledge that email has become such a problem for school leaders,, the average principal could receive anywhere between 50 to 150 emails per day.
I would receive easily, probably 50 emails a day, and a lot of principals I talk to receive even more than that. A lot of them being sales emails or parent emails. It really depends on the district you're in and how involved parents are or teachers. But principals can receive so many emails in a day.
If you think about it, 50 to 150 emails per day is potentially 750 emails in a work week. And with smartphones, we really have trouble disconnecting from work if we're constantly checking our email. And the crazy part about email is every time you're checking your email, it's fragmented with our attention, right?
Every time you check your inbox, you're pulled away from a [00:04:00] leadership task and you're switching task to go look at whatever's in your inbox and then your mind's on whatever you just checked in your email, whether it's a. Parent concern, or maybe it's something from central office that you have to handle or from the state.
But every time you do that, you're task switching, which means that your mind is changing all the time, which makes it hard to stay focused. So I created this guide to really help you think about how often you're checking your emails and some systems to put in place to make it a little bit better.
A standard email response is within 24 hours, and I think so often, and I'm guilty of this too, we live in an instant society where people want a response right now. They think if somebody emailed me, I need to respond to them right now.
And that's not true. You don't have to respond to people right away, especially if it's after the workday. I always say, go with that standard email etiquette of a 24 hour response window, so we have to stop feeling pressured to reply to everybody immediately
[00:05:00] at all hours of the day.
And the consequences of email aren't just affecting us as principals, but our entire school community. When we're constantly checking our own emails, we're modeling on healthy work life boundaries for our staff. I would see staff, and it wasn't email, but on remind messaging parents during teaching time, and I always said, you have to be teaching.
Think about this as a parent, if they knew you were messaging them. I know parents want instant responses. But would you rather your child's teacher be messaging you or teaching your child? And so I think that's another thing we have to think about is what is email and responding to Remind and all these other apps taking away from our actual job duties that we need to be doing and taking our focus away from other things.
So now I wanna transition and talk about the five step email detox plan. So I'm gonna walk you through some practical steps. To detox yourself from email so that you're not on your email all the time. So step one, [00:06:00] remove email from your phone. I did this couple years into leadership and it was one of the most impactful things I did for my own wellbeing and mindset when I was home.
It allowed me to truly disconnect. And when I coach principals, I always encouraged them to do this. And just recently one of them said, this was one of the simplest things I did that made an impact right away. Principals can see an immediate sense of relief if you take this step of taking email off your phone because you're really releasing work for when you get home.
It's not right there. It's not one click away because when it's on your phone, it's so easy to just click that email and view it versus having to go log into a computer and actually check your email. So I really encourage you if you have email on your phone to remove your email from your phone.
Step two, set clear expectations with your staff. This is so important. They need to know that you're not gonna be checking your email after hours, because if they send you an important email, they need to [00:07:00] know that you're not going to see it. Now, what I always did is I said, you have my phone number. Send me a text, call me.
You can communicate with me after school. If it's an emergency, I'm just not going to be checking my email because that really differentiates between what I really need to focus on after school and what I don't. And when staff had to call me or text me, they really respected my personal time and they would say things to me like, I really wanna respect your boundaries, but I felt like this was an emergency.
I. And I think that not only one did I appreciate that they had that mindset, but two, I was showing them that I wanted to respect their boundaries. If I have boundaries, I want them to have boundaries as well. And that was the conversation we always had is I am not responding to parents after school and I'm not responding to you after school through email, and I want you to do the same.
When it comes to parents, you should have those boundaries as well. So let them know. Set those clear expectations. And step three, gradually reduce after hour email. So when you first take email off your [00:08:00] phone, for some people, this is really hard. The one principal I was working with who took email off her phone, she said I wasn't completely ready to give it up.
All the way. So one time in the evening, she would go on her computer and check it, but that really helped. She said with her boundaries still, because she was constantly checking it on her phone versus one time on her computer. So even if you have the need that you need to check it at least one time, or maybe one time in the evening, one time in the morning, gradually reduce after hour emails.
If you're used to constantly being available, you can moderately wean that off so that you're not just going from checking email all the time to not at all. That might be really hard for you to disconnect that way. So if you need to, like I said, pick established times and check your email, then that way you're not checking email at your kids' sporting events because you're actually going to get on a computer and check it one time, maybe after or before you go.
. Step four, establish scheduled email blocks during school hours. So you don't need to have your email open [00:09:00] all day and check your email all day. Check your email in the morning at lunchtime and at the end of the day you can have those set times. Again, you don't have to respond right away.
So every time you're checking your email, you're fragmenting your attention from things that you're working on. And one of the things I teach in my eight to four blueprint is that we really need to be focused and have focused work blocks because the more we're task switching, the harder it is to get things done, because our minds are just moving from thing to thing.
And so if you have email blocks where you're checking in the morning, midday, and end of day, it's going to make it much easier for you to focus. And step five, prioritize alternative communication methods. So for parent communications and teacher interactions, call people.
The more you can call people, the more you can go have an in-person conversation. If I get an angry email from a parent, I never respond through email because they don't know my tone. And I wanna come across as empathetic and them know that I care and I'm listening, [00:10:00] and I can do that through a phone call much better than I can through email.
And most of the time, one of the great things about not checking your email at night is. Parents will send emails that they're upset about four o'clock because that's when their kids would get home and they would tell them something. And by the time I called them the next day, the parents were usually calmed down, had figured out the situation, and it all had resolved itself.
Versus if I called that parent at five o'clock at home on my cell phone, they're gonna be all riled up. I'm using my time outside of school and I'm also having to solve an issue that would've just solved itself. So using phone calls is really good. When I did walkthroughs in the building with teachers, I'd always stop and see teachers.
So they would use that time to talk to me versus sending me an email.
Prioritize other communication methods. Yeah. And then I also wanna really encourage you to track this. So anything that you're new with and you're trying to create a habit, I always tell people to track it for accountability. In my free PDF of the principal's email detox, I do have [00:11:00] tracking sheets where you can actually track.
When you're checking your email or your goals for checking your email and then check off if you meet those goals. And that accountability really does help you identify patterns and build healthier email habits. It also includes reflection sections where you can document what's working well and areas that you need to continue to work on.
So that tracker can be really helpful for you if you're trying to change your relationship with email
and how often you're checking your email. So I hope that you found this helpful. Just remember, by implementing these strategies. You can regain control of your time, not only during the school day, but after school as well. You can improve your wellbeing because you'll disconnect from school better, and you're going to model healthy work life boundaries for your entire school community, , for your parents, for teachers.
As I say in my eight to four blueprint boundaries benefit everybody. So remember, this isn't just about you having more personal time. It's about becoming a more effective, present and energized [00:12:00] leader for your students and staff. And if you wanna download the Free Principals email detox, I have the link below in the show notes for you to download it.
And I encourage you to download it, get those resources. It has the tips that we talked about today, if you're driving and you wanna see them again, and it has those accountability sheets as well.
Thanks for listening to the Principal's Handbook. If you love the show, if you're listening on Apple, scroll down in your app and leave a review. I hope you have a great week, and I'll see you back here next time.