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?

Pavlov’s Inbox

Pavlov’s Inbox is an email sys­tem built around the idea that your inbox prob­lems can­not be solved by more effi­ciently pro­cessing email (e.g. Inbox Zero and sim­il­ar sys­tems). Such sys­tems will only reward unfa­vour­able sender behaviours.

Pavlov’s Inbox sys­tem assumes that you can influ­ence the beha­viours of those send­ing you emails — through conditioning.

• You reward email senders you favour by reply­ing swiftly and doing as much work as possible.
• You pun­ish email senders you loathe by politely push­ing work back to where it came from.

Pavlov’s Inbox sys­tem is based on psy­cho­lo­gic­al ideas on how to reward and pun­ish email beha­viours in a socially viable man­ner (being rude as “pun­ish­ment” might only be det­ri­ment­al to your pro­fes­sion­al repu­ta­tion).

The oper­at­ing prin­ciple of Pavlov’s Inbox is to a) reward favour­able types of emails by min­im­ising the amount of work required by the sender and b) pun­ish unfa­vour­able emails by max­im­ising the amount of work required by the sender.

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

💡 Subscribe and get a free ebook on how to get bet­ter PR ideas!

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.

Recommendation: 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.

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.

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.

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.”