Remote Work for Humans

Why Email Feels So Terrible

In 2020, I began my own personal quest against email. Even before I knew about remote work best practices, I understood that email was standing in the way of my ability to focus and actually do my job.

I’ve often joked that any thought I have, someone has written a book about it. In the case of my disdain for email, Cal Newport wrote the book: A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload. Now, for the first time, I had research backing up my quest. In his essay for the Harvard Business Review “A Modest Proposal: Eliminate Email”, Newport states:

As more knowledge workers now acknowledge, the inbox-bound lifestyle created by an unstructured workflow is exhausting and anxiety-provoking. Humans are not wired to exist in a constant state of divided attention, and we need the ability to gain distance from work to reflect and recharge. Put simply, this workflow, which can transform even the highest skilled knowledge workers into message-passing automatons, is making an entire sector of our economy miserable.

It should be noted that Newport also wrote the book on (and named) Deep Work. This book describes the benefits of letting people focus, get into flow, and get deep with their knowledge work. When he says “humans are not wired to exist in a constant state of divided attention” he really means it.

One of my biggest takeaways from A World Without Email was that none of this was by design. Email is the way that it is because it’s easy and convenient in the moment. It’s “easier” to shoot off emails and reply to ad hoc requests than it is to carefully plan your workflows in a way that reduces the need for email and urgency.

Spoiler Alert: We Did Not Eliminate Email

Newport’s book came out in 2021. A recent Microsoft Work Trend Index Special Report, Breaking Down the Infinite Workday, released in June of 2025 reveals that email is still very much a part of our lives. We did not eliminate email.

According to the report:

This information, coupled with the fact that the article states that AI is the solution to the infinite workday feels a bit much (to put it mildly). However, in the absence of standing up a human-agent team (not a near-future reality for most of us in the public sector) there are steps you can take to protect your peace using simple tools already built into Outlook.

Outlook Moves to Protect Your Peace

By themselves, these are just buttons and settings in Outlook that automate tasks. The power and the shift to overcoming inbox overwhelm comes with the intention behind implementing these tools.

Your inbox is yours to craft in the way that works best for you and your workflows. If your inbox feels like unorganized chaos, use these tools to reduce the volume and add some direction to the flow of emails. If you shift all of your emails manually to subfolders in your inbox, but that process creates anxiety for you rather than adding a sense of order, use these tools to take some of that work off of your plate.

There is no one right way to organize your inbox, there is only the way that you feel adds peace to your work day.

Ignore Conversation

The ignore conversation button, found in the Delete section of the Home tab, is for when you just don’t give a flip. You know, like when people keep replying all to an agency wide email (the reply-all-colypse).

Once you select your conversation and hit that ignore button, the initial email and all of those unwanted replies head right to your trash can where they belong. Protect your peace.

Clean-Up Folder

Another Delete section hero. The absolute best button to press when coming back from vacation. You can use the clean up function to cut down the volume of emails instantly.

This button works by taking a long email thread and zipping it up neatly into the latest email in the thread. So, if people were having conversation about something and you get to it 5 emails in, you can de-bulk the volume of unread emails and just focus on the last email in the thread. You can apply this setting to a specific conversation but my favorite move is applying to all folders and subfolders of my inbox.

You will have to read down the entire email thread (if you are nosey like me, you do this anyway) but it’s keeping you focused on the conversation at hand rather than jumping between thoughts and conversations because you are just jumping from unread email to unread email.

A note for those that are worried you will lose aspects of your conversation to this process. You will not. It’s all in the thread and actually (frustratingly) Microsoft does not do this perfectly. You will still find broken out aspects of the conversation (just greatly reduced) say if someone attached a document at one point, or the conversation pulled other people in (what I like to call a mutating email thread). Everything really is preserved.

Manage Rules

The previous tools were one click solutions for your inbox. Manage rules takes the most thought but is the most powerful tool I’ve used for calming my inbox chaos.

For this one, I’ll link to the technical guidance Microsoft provides as I am admittedly a bit basic in how I use this tool and you may want to play around with even more functionality than I describe here.

Here’s how I use this tool to create a more intentionally focused inbox.

• Take stock of what’s coming into your inbox and think about what you actually want to focus on first in your emails. This will typically be emails that warrant your awareness relatively quickly or that you would take an action on.
• Create subfolders to move de-prioritized emails to in your inbox.
• Select the email for which you would like to create a rule
• Right click and select “Create Rule”
• Now you are taken to an menu where you can select what you want Outlook to look for to get your message out of your inbox for you
• Repeat for all types of emails that you would like to de-prioritize

I’ll give an example of how I set up a subfolder category for my own inbox.

For my job we receive a lot of IT updates that range in topic from “You need to install this update now” to “The intranet is out at this random office clear across the country”. The emails typically come from the same set of email addresses or have consistent titles.

I went through my inbox and looked at all the different IT emails that came through and created rules for all of them to go to one subfolder of my inbox called IT alerts. I’ll note that applying the rule to your inbox right after you create it shows you the emails your rule may be missing and insight into additional rules you may need to create to catch everything.

Now, if I go away for a bit and come back to my inbox, I will see my inbox unread email count (after I clean up all conversations of course) and then I will see the unread email count for the subfolder that holds all my IT emails. There is nothing better than right clicking that subfolder and marking all as read without even opening it.

For me, this works because I don’t worry about missing anything significant in these IT updates. The information is all there, I can just come to it at my leisure. My IT folks are also very kind and always put [action required] in the subject line if there truly is something we need to do.

This has been a game changer for me in terms of reducing my email inbox stress. Automating my subfolders creates the space to focus my attention on what really matters in my inbox first. What’s waiting for me in the subfolders is neatly categorized to my specifications according to how my brain works best. I know that I don’t even have to look in those subfolders if I don’t want to. Peace. Protected.

Some Bonus Mindset Tips

You can’t control what people send you but you can always control how and when you respond.

Embrace the joy of missing out (JOMO).

It has always been the case that every email that comes into your inbox is not for you. It has always been the case that you do not need to “do” anything for every single email that finds its way to your inbox. Everything does not need your immediate awareness. Everything is not urgent.

With these automations, I hope that you can release those deprioritized or deleted emails fully and not wonder “what if I missed something important”. Trust me, if someone really needs you, they will find you. I promise.

Working Toward a World Without Email

I’m still on a quest against email. In a previous blog, I talk about building workflows that reduce the need to email (or chat or have meetings). I do this while acknowledging the current reality: that email is here. However, while it’s here, it doesn’t have to drive us so crazy and it doesn’t have to feel beyond our control. Protect your peace and work like a human.