The best way to deal with an urgent email

Want to know the best way to deal with an urgent email?

Don't call it "urgent."

Here's why:

The words we use matter.

How we describe things in the world - like an email - is how we think about those things.

And what we're thinking - combinations of words, sentences in our brains - drives how we feel.

So labelling an email as urgent will most likely make you feel panicked (or some flavour of that - you're certainly not going to feel calm).

Simply because that beautiful brain of yours is designed to scan for danger.

Anything urgent it assumes is dangerous. 

That there will be some consequence if you don’t respond NOW. 

So it rings all the emotional alarm bells to get you to take notice. 

It puts your whole nervous system into fight, flight or freeze - ready to escape a lion.

And so of course you feel panicked.

But here's the thing: your brain can’t tell the difference between a lion and an email. 

Panic can be a useful response when there’s a lion - with your heart rate up and whole body on alert, you'll get out of the way quickly. 

But panic isn’t helpful for responding to that email. 

Because when your emotional state is heightened (like when you’re feeling panicked), your critical thinking is low.

The more primitive part of your brain is calling the shots to keep you alive.

So any decisions you make are reactive, short-term and highly emotional.

Which is when you get into reactive firefighting mode, rushing or jumping from your inbox to your to-do list and back again.

Or when you reply to the email hastily and miss something in the rush.

All because your brain labelled the email as “urgent.”

Now...what if it was just an email?

What if there’s no such thing as an urgent email, just an email that you want to reply to?

When you drop the story around it being urgent, you calm your brain down.

You're not longer operating from the primitive part of your brain. Your body isn't in panic mode anymore, ready to flee a lion.

Instead, you're operating from your rational pre-frontal cortex.

This part of your brain makes high quality, long term decisions.

So any email reply will be well thought out and measured.

Or maybe you'll realise it doesn't need replied to right away anyways.

When you calm your brain down and show it that there's no lion, that's when you'll feel in control no matter what kind of emails ping into your inbox.

The words we use when we speak to ourselves and describe the world around us (our thoughts) matter.

And we get to choose what words we use.

So pick words that help you.

And drop the ones that don’t.