--- title: Email Is A Series of Commitments Made For You | The Sales Blog description: Last I asked an audience of 400 people how many had emailed me directly. Something like 30 percent of the audience raised their hands. image: https://www.thesalesblog.com/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/shutterstock_554462242.jpg --- ### [Now booking SKO meetings for 2026/27! 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Something like 30 percent of the audience raised their hands. I asked them to raise their hands again if I had emailed them back, and the same hands went up. Then I asked them to leave their hands up if I had emailed them back within 24 hours. All of the hands disappeared, and everyone laughed a sort of uncomfortable laugh. The workshop I was giving was on productivity. I explained that I don’t live in my inbox. I scan it three or four times throughout the day, looking only for email that requires my immediate attention, of which there are few. What isn’t urgent normally get processed on Wednesday or Saturday mornings—when I do reply to every email. Here’s the thing. On your death bed, you are not going to turn and say to the people who love you, “I can die happy now, knowing that I am at Inbox Zero.” An email is mostly a series of commitments that have been made for you without your consent. The first commitment you have had made on your behalf is to read the email to discover what it says. Even if you don’t know the person who sent the email, you have to give it your attention to determine whether or not it requires your time or attention. Even when it doesn’t need your time or attention, it has already commanded your time and attention. The second commitment that has been made for you is the commitment to decide what to do with the email. Does it require you to do something? Does it tell you something you need to know? Look, this is not a massive cognitive load, but it still requires that you do something, and the reasons your inbox has so many unprocessed emails living there now is because deciding what something means or what you have to do with it can be real work. The third commitment is some sort of action. Maybe you can delete a lot of the email that shows up in your inbox. But many of them require a response, and that response takes time and energy—even if only a small amount. I read and respond to every email because people and [relationships](http://thesalesblog.com/2016/11/17/how-to-be-intimate-in-commercial-relationships/) are important to me. But being productive requires that you do what is most important, not what is most recent, and keeping up with email is a shift of focus from important to recent. If you want [to be super-productive](http://thesalesblog.com/2017/01/09/how-to-be-super-productive-episode-12/), you have to focus on what’s most important first, and let everything that isn’t follow that work. ###### Tags: [Sales](https://www.thesalesblog.com/blog/tag/sales) [2017](https://www.thesalesblog.com/blog/tag/2017) Post by [Anthony Iannarino](https://www.thesalesblog.com/blog/author/anthony-iannarino) on April 22, 2017 Written and edited by human brains and human hands. ![Anthony Iannarino](https://www.thesalesblog.com/hubfs/ai-blog-profile-crop.jpg) Anthony Iannarino is an American writer. He has published daily at [thesalesblog.com](https://www.thesalesblog.com) for more than 14 years, amassing over 5,300 articles and making this platform a destination for salespeople and sales leaders. Anthony is also the author of four best-selling books documenting modern sales methodologies and a fifth book for sales leaders seeking revenue growth. His latest book for an even wider audience is titled, The Negativity Fast: Proven Techniques to Increase Positivity, Reduce Fear, and Boost Success. Anthony speaks to sales organizations worldwide, delivering cutting-edge sales strategies and tactics that work in this ever-evolving B2B landscape. He also provides workshops and seminars. Connect with Anthony on LinkedIn, X or Youtube. 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What we’re doing right now **is working**, even in this challenging economy. **Would you like some help?** [![Solve for Sales](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/2922376/d3a4938b-2008-4a27-8b44-7b2223f6d035.png)](https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/2922376/d3a4938b-2008-4a27-8b44-7b2223f6d035) ### Join my Weekly Newsletter for Sales Tips Join 100,000+ sales professionals in my weekly newsletter and get my *Guide to Becoming a Sales Hustler* eBook for FREE! --- ```json { "@context" : "http://schema.org/", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Anthony Iannarino" }, "dateModified" : "2021-09-17T1:42:47 PM", "datePublished" : "2017-04-22 19:17:12", "description" : "Last I asked an audience of 400 people how many had emailed me directly. 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