Breaking the Backlog Cycle: Never Get Behind Again

Backlogs. We all have them. But, how do you clear them and then prevent them from happening again? That’s what we’re looking at today. 

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Script | 367

Hello, and welcome to episode 368 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Organising your work, creating lists of things to do, and managing your projects in your notes are all good common-sense productivity practices. However, none of these are going to be helpful if you have huge backlogs of admin, messages, and emails creating what I call a low-level anxiety buzz. 

You’re going to be stressed and distracted and in no place to be at your very best. 

What’s more, this can become a chronic problem if those backlogs are growing. This is when critical things are going to get missed. 

I’m often surprised to get an email from someone asking me if they can have a discount code for an early-bird discount that expired three or four weeks previously. I mean, come on. If it’s taking you three to four weeks to get to an email—even if you consider it to be a low-value email—there’s a serious problem in your system. (Or more likely, you don’t have a system at all.) 

So this week, I want to share with you a few ideas that can help you regain control of these backlogs and, more importantly, prevent them from happening again. 

So, with that said, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. 

This week’s question comes from Wyatt. Wyatt asks, hi Carl, how would you help someone who is backlogged beyond belief. I’ve got over 3,000 emails in my inbox, and my team are still waiting for me to finish their appraisals from last year! I feel so stuck. Please help. 

Hi Wyatt. Thank you for your question. 

Sorry to hear you feel swamped. I know it can be a horrible place to be. 

Before we begin, let me explain the three types of backlogs we all have to deal with.

The first is the growing backlog. This one is the worst because it’s getting bigger and unless you take action immediately, it’s going to overwhelm you. These kinds of backlogs will always be your priority.

The next type of backlog is the static backlog. It’s not growing, but it’s there and it’s on your mind. It needs to be dealt with, but the urgency isn’t as big as a growing backlog. 

And then there’s the shrinking backlog. These are the best because if they are shrinking, they’ll soon disappear altogether. 

Now, one of the most common areas of our work that backlogs is our email. The last statistics I saw show that on average, people are getting 90+ emails a day. 

If you need an average of 30 seconds to deal with each email—which I know is low—that’s around forty-five minutes to deal with them. 

Do you have forty-five minutes today to deal with your email? 

Remember, that’s a small amount of time for each email. It’s likely you’ll need more than thirty seconds for most of those mails. 

Now the good news. If you’re starting with a backlog of over 3,000 emails, many of those emails will no longer require a response. The moment’s passed.

What I would suggest is you take any emails older than a month, and move then to a folder called “Old In-box”. While my instinct it to tell you to delete them, I’ve never come across anyone courageous enough to do it. 

Although, if you think about it. Deleting them gives you a perfect excuse if someone follows you up—“sorry, I don’t seem to be able to find your email. Could you resend it?”

Doing this means you’ve cut your list by a large margin. What’s left can be processed.

Email is a two step process. Just like we used to do with regular letters. Open your post box, take out the mail and sort it between letters you need to read or respond to and throw away or file anything you don’t need to act on. 

And by the way, nobody left their mail in the mail box. Why do we do that with email? 

With email, it’s the same process. Clear your inbox. As you clear ask yourself two questions:

What is it?

What do I need to do with it?

If you need to read or reply to an email, then move it to a folder called “Action This Day”. If you don’t need to do anything with it, either delete or archive it. 

This is the processing stage. All you are doing is processing. You are not replying or reading. That comes later. This means, with practice, you’ll be able to process an individual email in a second or two—ten tops. 

Now, towards the end of the day, set aside some time for clearing your actionable emails. Try to do this as late in the day as possible. This prevents what is called email ping pong. 

If you reply in the morning, you’re going to get a reply in the afternoon. If you reply in the afternoon, even if you do get a reply, you can leave it until tomorrow to respond. Genius, yes?

There are two additional things here.

The first is to reverse the order of the mails in your action this day folder. This puts the oldest at the top. If you’re responding to your mails once a day, you want to be working from the oldest first. 

That way, no one will be waiting more than 24 hours or so for a reply from you. 

The second is to follow this process every day. 

I require around forty-five minutes a day for dealing with my actionable email. If I skip a day, then tomorrow I will need ninety minutes. I don’t have ninety minutes to spend on emails. If I do skip a day, I’ve got a backlog building. Not good. 

So, it’s an everyday thing if you want to prevent your email from becoming backlogged. 

And remember that one is greater than zero. In other words, if you don’t have a great deal of time available today, still do some of your actionable mail. That keeps you in touch with what’s going on in your mail box and it’s surprising how much you can get done in twenty minutes. 

Now, let’s move on to your appraisals.

You mention that your team is still waiting for their appraisals from last year. That suggests it’s an annual event rather than a quarterly event. Either way, the same principle works. 

For this kind of task, you need to be scheduling time for doing it. Often, with staff appraisals, you need a week to hold one-to-ones with your team before you can write anything. So, if you begin the appraisals in October, I would suggest you go into your calendar now and set up those appointments. 

I know we are a good four months away from October, but by getting them in your calendar now, it’s one less task to deal with and you’re not going to be going back and forth trying to get these appointments scheduled into one week. You’ll end up wasting time negotiating the best time. Do it now. 

Then, schedule the third week in October to write your appraisals. Depending on how long, on average, this work takes, you could block a whole day—or two if you need it—to spend writing appraisals. 

Getting it on your calendar means you are less likely to allow anything else to take that time away. 

To deal with last year’s appraisals, it’s the same process. If you have not completed the one-to-ones, schedule those for next week. Make it a non-negotiable part of your week. 

Then go into your calendar and block time out for writing the appraisals. 

For things like this there’s an element of intentionality. Things don’t get done until you intentionally set aside time to do it and then get started. 

Agin, this is two steps. First set aside time—that’s the easy bit—then sit down and do it—that’s the hard part. 

Yet, as long as you begin, once you’re in the flow and you know nothing else is coming up to tear you away from doing the work, you will get it done. 

Clearing backlogs is one thing. Preventing backlogs from occurring is another. 

Email is a good example, if you are not following the process every day, a backlog will occur. This is not something you can wish away. It doesn’t go away. It’s the same with Teams and Slack messages. 

If you’re getting a lot of notifications from these channels of communication, you’re not going to get a lot done if you’re responding to these messages moment they come in. It will exhaust you because of the constant cognitive load switching. 

I find dealing with messages is best done between sessions of work. 

Let me explain. We know about the sleep cycle—where you sleep in cycles of 90 minutes. Well, it turns out you are also awake in 90-minute cycles. 

What this means is you can focus on a piece of work for around 90 minutes. After which your brain will tire, and you will need a distraction. That could be a toilet break, or the desire to get up and refresh your coffee or water. 

This is your brain telling you that you need a break. 

Now, if you use that to your advantage, you could schedule your focused work sessions around 90-minute blocks. For example, your first, and most important block, could be set for 9:30 to 11:00 am. Then you make sure you have a 30-minute gap before you allow anything else that requires a degree of focus. 

In that thirty minutes, you could get up and go to the bathroom, refresh your water and deal with your messages. The longest anyone will be waiting for your response would be 90 minutes. 

No demanding boss or client can complain at that. I know, I’ve dealt with some very bad, demanding bosses and clients in my time. They can be trained. 

If you were to stick with these ideas and processes, I can promise you that you will get a lot more important work done, reduce your backlogs and feel a lot less exhausted at the end of the day. 

You’re in effect working with your brain instead of against it. 

Preventing backlogs really comes down to how you structure your day. Most people are not doing that. They have no structure, so they are working on the latest and loudest thing. The problem is that the latest and loudest thing is often not the most important thing. 

However, if you set aside time each day for dealing with your communications—say an hour and respect that time—and perhaps a further thirty minutes for dealing with your admin—another area that can become backlogged—you will prevent backlogs from happening. 

If you run your day by the seat of your trousers, then, yes, you will have huge, growing backlogs. Responding to your email is rarely urgent, so it gets left behind on busy days. And that means you require double the amount of time tomorrow. And what happens if tomorrow is a busy day? 

I hope that has helped, Wyatt. Thank you for your question and thank you to you too for listening. It just remains for me to wish you all a very very productive week.