I love to run. For me, it is exercise, solitude, soul care, prayer time, thinking time, learning time, me time, all rolled into an hour or so, three times a week. Like many runners, I’m also incredibly goal oriented, so I sign up for half marathons several times a year. And I have a long term goal of running a half in all 50 states. I like to say that I don’t pay gym fees, I pay race fees. (Are runners goal oriented or are goal oriented people drawn to running?) Recently, I found myself in a race hole. One race ended without another one on the books anytime soon. Through it, I learned some important lessons about having ongoing maintenance goals as well as big deadline goals and it’s having an impact on my pastoral work life as well.

I get embarrassed over how many times I have to ask a new contact for their name…a second time.

It’s like they just told me their name and by the end of the conversation, I am asking, “So…tell me your name again?” And even then there might be a chance that I struggle to keep that name with me.

Why does that happen?

Email is like a visit to the dentist. You don’t really want to go. You’re a little nervous about what you might find, but at some point, it just has to be done. It’s painful to open your inbox after only a couple hours of meetings to find dozens of new emails dying for a response. It doesn’t have to be this bad. But here’s the deal – to quote Smokey The Bear, “only you can prevent forest fires”. With each new crop of interns that come through our church, I share some simple tips for making e-mail less painful for those around you. These are rules I try to live by. I thought I’d share them with you in hopes that together, we can reduce the volume in our inbox, and the length of the emails in it. (Plus I wanted to link to this article in my own e-mail footer, maybe you should too!)