Pavlov’s Inbox: The Psychological Way to Tame Your Email

I use Pavlov’s Inbox to man­age my incom­ing emails.

I’m not a fan of Inbox Zero. I get the gen­er­al idea behind the pop­u­lar email pro­ductiv­ity sys­tem, but it’s not for me. 

I favour anoth­er approach:

Therefore, I use a pro­act­ive sys­tem based on oper­ant con­di­tion­ing to rein­force or pun­ish exist­ing beha­viours. ¹There is, of course, the issue of spam, unau­thor­ised soli­cit­a­tion, and point­less social net­work noti­fic­a­tions. However, these should be filtered, not per­son­ally man­aged.

I call it Pavlov’s Inbox.

Here we go:

What Is Pavlov’s Inbox?

The Power of Conditioning

In clas­sic­al con­di­tion­ing, psy­cho­lo­gist Ivan Pavlov made dogs sal­iv­ate by hear­ing the sound of a tri­angle. Every time he fed the dogs, he played the sound. Soon, he could play the sound to eli­cit the dogs’ phys­ic­al response (sal­iv­a­tion) — without the food. ²Classical con­di­tion­ing. (2023, January 17). In Wikipedia. https://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​C​l​a​s​s​i​c​a​l​_​c​o​n​d​i​t​i​o​n​ing

In oper­ant con­di­tion­ing (also called instru­ment­al con­di­tion­ing), the strength of an exist­ing beha­viour is mod­i­fied by rein­force­ment or pun­ish­ment. ³Operant con­di­tion­ing. (2023, January 13). In Wikipedia. https://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​O​p​e​r​a​n​t​_​c​o​n​d​i​t​i​o​n​ing

So, where clas­sic­al con­di­tion­ing eli­cits an invol­un­tary beha­vi­our­al response (“reflexes”), oper­ant con­di­tion­ing mod­i­fies exist­ing beha­viour (“vol­un­tary”).

Both meth­ods modi­fy beha­viour by con­di­tion­ing, and the dis­tinc­tion between these two approaches isn’t clear-cut. While sal­iv­a­tion can be seen as a “reflex,” want­ing treats des­pite not being hungry has ele­ments of being a vol­un­tary beha­viour. And modi­fy­ing beha­viour to seek rein­force­ment act­ively or escape pun­ish­ment can be more or less unconscious.

To affect inbox beha­viours, we wish to modi­fy exist­ing beha­viours through rein­force­ment or pun­ish­ment (oper­ant con­di­tion­ing) but do it dis­cretely so that the beha­viours become reflexes (clas­sic­al conditioning). 

How To “Punish” Bad Senders

If you always reply to emails promptly and with added value, some senders will quickly pick up on this — and send you more emails of the same type. In some cases, this is desir­able, but not always. 

What if people take advant­age of your prompt replies? The Inbox Zero sys­tem makes no such distinction.

For many emails land­ing in your inbox, you must push back against the senders — by cre­at­ing social dis­com­fort for them.

So, you keep reward­ing senders of favour­able emails by com­ply­ing swiftly. If someone asks you to do some­thing and you — for whatever reas­on — want to do it, you do it.

This beha­viour on your part will increase your chances of get­ting more of these favour­able emails.

But how do you “pun­ish” senders of unfa­vour­able emails?

By gently “pun­ish­ing” senders of unfa­vour­able emails, you’ll have to send a few extra emails at the begin­ning of rela­tion­ships. The idea: A little extra effort upfront, much less effort down the line.

Affiliate: I use Mailchimp as my default email list manager.

Example: The Unnecessary Meeting

My col­league “John” wants to chat, but I know from exper­i­ence that he will use every oppor­tun­ity to push his work onto my plate.

•••
To: Jerry Subject: Meeting about X Hi Jerry, Can we have a meet­ing about X? Kind regards, John

•••
To: John Subject: RE: Meeting about X Hi John, Please send an agenda detail­ing the decisions we need to make, and I’ll see if I can make it work. Thanks, Jerry

•••
To: Jerry Subject: RE: Meeting about X Hi Jerry, No need for an agenda, I think. I only need your input. Kind regards, John

•••
To: John Subject: RE: Meeting about X Hi John, I get it, but I’ll need some back­ground. Can you assemble a doc­u­ment out­lining the scope and send me the pdf? Thanks, Jerry

•••
To: Jerry Subject: RE: Meeting about X Hi Jerry, No need for a back­ground doc­u­ment, either. I can brief you at the meet­ing. Kind regards, John

•••
To: John Subject: RE: Meeting about X Hi John, All right, but please tell me in writ­ing what decisions we should make in this meet­ing. My work­load is massive right now and I must pri­or­it­ise action­able meet­ings. Thanks, Jerry

•••
To: Jerry Subject: RE: Meeting about X Hi Jerry, Okay, I’ll ask Charlotte instead if your work­load is that high. Kind regards, John

I’m not say­ing no to John, but I keep ask­ing him to do extra work before con­sid­er­ing his request. After some ini­tial back-and-forth, emails like this will cease.

Arguably, I could say no to John upfront, but that will turn him into a “work­place enemy” — and provide him with undis­put­able proof that I’m unwill­ing to aid a col­league in need. In most cases, this is a drama I can live without.

Read also: 7 Surefire Ways To Dominate Office Politics

Example: The Scope Creep

The cli­ent deal is final­ised and signed, but once the pro­ject is under­way, my cli­ent, Miranda, tries to get us to do more than we agreed.

•••
To: Jerry Subject: Regarding the deliv­er­able Hi Jerry, We need the deliv­er­able two days earli­er. And we also need to add a couple more journ­al­ists to the out­reach. Can we make this work? Kind regards, Miranda

•••
To: Miranda Subject: RE: Regarding the deliv­er­able Hi Miranda, I can check with the pro­duc­tion team and draft a brief pro­pos­al for the added effort. Can you con­firm that you want me to pro­ceed? (Y/​N) Thanks, Jerry

•••
To: Jerry Subject: RE: Regarding the deliv­er­able Hi Jerry, Didn’t real­ise that it was going to cost extra. I think we’ll have to make do with the exist­ing scope. No need to make any changes. Kind regards, Miranda

•••
To: Miranda Subject: RE: Regarding the deliv­er­able Hi Miranda, No wor­ries, we’ll make sure to pro­ceed accord­ing to plan. Kind regards, Jerry

By push­ing work back on Miranda (mak­ing a prob­lem­at­ic budget decision), she opted not to ask us to work for free.

If Miranda had said yes, the email con­ver­sa­tion would have moved into the pile of favour­able emails. More import­antly, you’re unlikely to get unso­li­cited requests from Miranda in the future.

Example: The Free Lunch

An acquaint­ance is reach­ing out ask­ing if he can buy me lunch. It could be nice to catch up, but he’ll only talk about him­self and his business.

•••
To: Jerry Subject: Lunch? Hi Jerry, Long time no see. I read your awe­some blog post on deep con­tent the oth­er day, and I’d love to pick your brain about a cool pro­ject I got going on. Would you let me buy you lunch next week? Kind regards, Eric

•••
To: Eric Subject: RE: Lunch? Hi Eric, All is well. How are you? And thanks for check­ing out the blog. Sounds intriguing. While I check my cal­en­dar for open­ings, could you put togeth­er a brief? When giv­ing advice to star­tups, I like to come pre­pared. Thanks, Jerry

•••
To: Jerry Subject: RE: Lunch? Hi Jerry, Hey man, to be clear: this is not a brief. I just want to pick your brain over lunch. Would love to catch up. Kind regards, Eric

•••
To: Eric Subject: RE: Lunch? Hi Eric, Sorry, I only advise cli­ents — or poten­tial cli­ents. It has to do with account­ab­il­ity and some oth­er leg­al stuff. Thanks, Jerry

•••
To: Jerry Subject: RE: Lunch? Hi Jerry, Aha, I did­n’t know that. But we might be inter­ested in becom­ing your cli­ent down the line. Kind regards, Eric

•••
To: Eric Subject: RE: Lunch? Hi Eric, All right, I’ll see what I can do. In the mean­time, could you send an NDA (non-dis­clos­ure agree­ment)? This is for both of our sakes. We don’t want to get in trouble for dis­cuss­ing sens­it­ive busi­ness inform­a­tion. Thanks, Jerry

•••
To: Jerry Subject: RE: Lunch? Hi Jerry, Hmm, sounds a bit like we aren’t ready yet. I just wanted to pick your brain over lunch, haha. Kind regards, Eric

•••
To: Eric Subject: RE: Lunch? Hi Eric, No wor­ries, man. I love your star­tup idea and am sure you’re onto some­thing big. I’m here for you as soon as you’re ready to step it up to the next level. Until then, Jerry

By push­ing back on pro­fes­sion­al­ism, I’m for­cing Eric to say no first — which puts us back on equal footing.

More Emails Upfront, Less (But Better!) Emails Down the Line

You’re right if you think the “push­back approach” seems like more emails back and forth upfront. But you’re invest­ing in rela­tion­ships instead of a folder system.

Soon, your inbox will start filling up with the kind of emails you want instead of the emails oth­er people want to send you. Not only will you be more pro­duct­ive, but you’ll also be able to pro­duce more value.

Perhaps, per­haps not. If you feel uncom­fort­able, remem­ber that scope creep, unne­ces­sary meet­ings, and work­ing for free aren’t sus­tain­able in the long run.

And, if you’re still a fan of email pro­ductiv­ity sys­tems like Inbox Zero, don’t worry. Just cre­ate a folder named “Push Back.”

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