Why You Should Send Emails To Yourself.
Email communication has become a streamlined way of communicating with others. So why am I sending emails to myself?
Backstory
I started sending emails to myself in March 2020, amidst the pandemic and there are are three main reasons I began. Mood, Productivity, and Self-Care. Throughout the process of sending emails to myself, I noticed that my happiness increased, my productivity was at an all-time high, and I was taking more time for myself than I ever was. Prior to starting the process of emailing myself, my emotions were inconsistent and my productivity and self-care were deferred.
They didn’t matter.
I was so focused on sending out emails to everyone I wanted to get in contact with for my podcast or an interview, that I stopped focusing on getting in contact with myself.
What’s The Purpose?
Sending emails to yourself allows yo to think from multiple standpoints. They include a retrospective, current, and futuristic standpoint. In the sense, everyday when I sit down to send an email to myself, I think back to events that occurred, discuss how the thoughts on my mind, and hit at the top 4 objectives for the following day.
Retrospective
I define my mental state (My How I’m Feeling Score) and reflect on the positives or negatives of the day. When I immerse in this process, I have the chance to understand my work flow, identify things that might’ve gone wrong, and think about past times when this event may have happened. I can dive into past emails and see if I had a similar day and if so, understand what my actions.
Another part of the retrospective is note-taking. For example, I usually have 2–3 calls a day and in the midst of the calls I don’t like to type notes since it conflicts with the my focus on the meeting. I usually have loose leaf sheet of paper and a pencil by my side so I can write down notes as the meeting goes on. When I do my retrospective, I can compile the notes into a central place, while expanding on my thoughts from the meeting. This allows for a great time to draw any more conclusions, questions, or notes.
Current
During the email process, I concentrate on my current state last. During this phase, I focus on my thoughts and record my current feelings. It can range from mood, things I need to get done, etc, as long as it provides insight for my current state.
Futuristic
As an entrepreneur, I love this one. Thinking about the future is my favorite part of the daily email process and gives me the chance to think about tomorrow and the meetings, objectives, and results I want to see. I tend to define four key goals in my emails and underneath, I devise KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) and KR’s (Key Results) to hold myself accountable for the items I write down.
KPI: The KPI’s are devised based on the goals and objectives I set for myself each night.
Ex: If I set a goal to complete an article. Key performance indicators may include completing an outline, adding valuable images, or pulling anecdotal evidence. While these KPI’s differentiate from the norm, they provide a system to track the measurable value which demonstrates that I’m making progress on an article.
KR: These serve as accountability reserves, allowing me to track my performance indicators and see success based on the KPI.
Why Retrospective, Current, and Futuristic?
Writing down my goals every night, reflecting on my habits allude to a couple of the examples I discussed but the key reason behind these is based on the fact that it offers a sense of reinforcement. Personally, this is beneficial in the long-term since I began to get deeper into my reflections, my thoughts, and started improving different skills I wanted to. Sending emails to myself with these key features also gives me a fun opportunity to understand my head space and provides me an archive of messages I to go through whenever I desire.
Not a vlogger but a gmailer.
TL;DR
- Devise your email into three main buckets → retrospective, current, futuristic
- Focus on KPI’s and KR’s → these are your measurements for success
- Hold yourself accountable, the emails are always going to be available for you, so go back and check them out! Reflection is the best way to learn.
