Personal Management 101: Taking back control of your inbox and social media alerts

Nine or ten thousand unread emails seems to be normal for typical student these days. And then they wonder why they might not have seen that important email from me! Or why they did see it, marked it as unread, and subsequently forgot to respond. Somebody’s (or many-bodies) inbox needs sorting out!

And here’s some handy tips to help you do just that.


Understand the importance of email

No doubt, you’re used to receiving communications in a variety of formats on a daily basis. WhatsApp messages, Twitter mentions and DMs, text messages, emails to multiple accounts, not to mention communication via Snapchat, Instagram, and all the other social media platforms that you’re signed up to. On top of that there are the occasional to rare phonecalls. Sometimes working out what’s important or not important can be very difficult. I’m even reliably informed that people’s mums prefer to WhatsApp their children than call them these days, so, yes, understanding what’s important can be close to impossible.

Outside of work settings, emails – which revolutionised communication in the nineties (before that it was just fax machines, the postal system, and good old-fashioned landlines, when they were just called telephones because there was no other type of phone) – have quickly gone out of fashion. Everyone has an email account (if not 3 or 4), but for many it’s a less than popular form of communication. Fair enough. Apart from the fact that some very important information is still passed on via email. Those who work in the real world (university lecturers, sports scholarship providers, national governing bodies, prospective employers – the important people, basically) are not just more likely to contact you by email, but in some cases it is the only form of communication open to them. Emails are important! University emails are particularly important, and while you may not want to receive emails berating you for not attending class, they may still be useful and important. Get into the habit of checking your university email account on a regular basis.


Deal with things straight away

Delete unwanted emails when you see them. Respond to emails that require a response straight away – you’re going to have to respond anyway, so why not do it now. If you don’t have time to respond, then why are you checking your emails right now? Find a time of the day where you can check your emails, delete unwanted ones, and respond where appropriate.


Reduce the number of promotional emails you receive

The biggest contributor to unread emails are promotional newsletters from companies which you have purchased things from before. They are emails which you never will, or never have to, read. Booking.com is a major offender, along with other hotel and travel sites, online retailers, etc. They send you emails for no other reason than to promote further products and services to you. Reducing or getting rid of these is a good starting point.

1. Take note of the people you get emails from that you never read
2. Unsubscribe from their mailing list (all promotional emails should have an ‘unsubscribe’ option at the bottom. Some email providers, e.g. Hotmail, will let you delete old emails from that sender when unsubscribing)
3. If you’re worried that you won’t be able to receive important emails from these people (e.g. booking confirmations), you should still be able to update your preferences
4. When buying online in the future, make sure that you untick the box to receive further promotional information from these suppliers (or tick the box that says you don’t want to receive their promotional emails)

Some providers offer additional tidy-up features and tools to help you stay on top of your important emails. Gmail, for example, gives you the option to separate your inbox into personal, social and promotional folders. It is not completely fool proof, in that some important emails can end up in the social or promotional folders, but it is a good starting point.


Reduce your social media alert emails

Social media alerts are another big contributor to unread emails. All social media platforms will give you the option to select what alerts you receive. In most cases you will only need to know when someone has sent you a direct message that you may need to respond to. You don’t need to know that Jonny responded to Mary’s post or that Paddy liked Jimmy’s picture. When you get an email about something on social media, it should be a prompt to check that social media platform and respond accordingly (not that most people need reminding that to check their social media accounts these days).


Remember junk is not always junk

Occasionally, important emails can end up in your junk email. Check your junk folder from time to time and make sure that no genuine mail is ending up in there. Sometimes emails from senders you don’t respond to, or emails that are sent to multiple recipients can inadvertently end up with the spam folder alongside the offers of money from Nigerian princes, and the phishing emails from fake Paypal accounts. If valuable emails are ending up in the junk folder, take time to mark them as safe, and add the sender to your safe list. If you’re a little unsure if someone is genuine or not, hovering over the sender to see what their email address is, is usually a good starting point. Most scammers have very fake looking addresses.


Get over the FOMO!

We probably all suffer a bit from the fear of missing out. But while we’re so busy making sure that we’re not missing out on social media conversations and updates, we’re actually missing out on what’s going on around us. Yes, the internet can help you stay in touch with friends, help you punch in time while on a bus or waiting in a queue, and be an important source of information, but you should never be living your entire life via the internet and social media. Decide what things you need to be informed of (and the latest Kim Kardashian news probably isn’t really that interesting), what alerts you really need to receive on your phone (remembering that you don’t need your phone to ‘ding’ every time someone shares a rabbit-ear selfie of themselves), what you really need the internet for, and then get busy living your real life. Give the real world your full attention.


Reduce study-time distractions

Many students tell me that they can’t study at home. That there are too many distractions. That the only place they can study is in the library, and that getting to the library takes up too much time. Realising that their phone is the biggest distraction, and learning to put it away during study time, can revolutionise their productivity and how they study. Unless you’re waiting for an important phonecall, you don’t need your phone anywhere near you while you’re studying. Be disciplined. And if you do need the internet to check facts or get additional information, make a list of things you need to look up, and do them all together when you need a break after a productive hour or two. If you are working on a laptop, PC or tablet, make sure that you don’t have notifications popping up in the corner and distracting you from what you should be doing.


There are numerous different ways of communicating. Yes, there will be important stuff that you shouldn’t miss (emails from your university, what’s app notifications from your club, perhaps, and text messages from your mum), but you don’t always need to know what everyone else is doing and thinking every moment of every day. Monitor what is important to you, and take steps to ensure that you receive the important stuff, and are not distracted by they unimportant stuff. Taking a few easy steps will help ensure that you are living the life you want for yourself, not somebody else’s fake social media life.

Book Review: Retired - What Happens to Footballers when the Game's up

'Almost half of professional footballers face the threat of bankruptcy within five years of their retirement. A third will be divorced less than a year after hanging up their boots... many end up addicted, depressed, living with debilitating illnesses, behind bars or even worse.' So writes Alen Gernon in his thought-provoking book about life after football.

I bought this book because of my interest in the difficulties sportspeople face when they retire rather than my interest in football. While I can accept that footballers are a little bit more three-dimensional than the common perception of over-paid, attention-seeking tugs, I didn't expect to be almost feeling sorry for them by the time I'd finished the 256-page, easy to read publication.

The initial chapters each covered one of the main, often inter-related, tragedies facing retired footballers - the crippling after effects of physical and mental injury, divorce, bankruptcy, mental health issues, run-ins with the law - and while the issues are not unique to football, it is the sheer frequency that they occur which startles.

These chapters didn't really contain anything new for me - though to be fair I have already read extensively on the area of retirement and mental health issues in sport - and they were occasionally repetitive. However, the book really came to life in the latter chapters. The stories of players who retired early, by choice, from the game - those of Shane Supple, Espen Baardsen and David Bentley - really hammer home how toxic the football environment can be for some, and how, despite increased support, preparing players for life in the 'real world' is not always an expected function of the sport.

As always it's those that we don't hear about that have the most interesting stories to tell, and Gernon should be commended for collating and putting context to those less well known stories.

This book is definitely worth a read for those who would like to understand football and footballers a little deeper as well as those who work with transitional footballers of all ages. It is a gentle reminder of the responsibilities we have for the welfare, as well as the sporting performance, of those who we support.

Anyone can be an Olympian; but that doesn't mean it's easy

This week has been a big week in the lives of track and field athletes across the world. This is the week in which most national governing bodies are announcing and nominating their teams for one of the central sports on the Olympic programme. It is, in short, the week in which dreams are made and hearts are broken.

This morning I gave a small talk to some of the athletes attending the week's Wexford Athletics Summer Camp. Twenty-three years in the sport has thought me that if just one of those young athletes makes the Olympic, they'll have beaten the odds. In fact, if even two or three of them compete in athletics as an adult, that'll be a small miracle. Over the years I've seen hundreds of young athletes, many far more talented than me, give up on the sport because they can't handle been beaten, because they want to concentrate on their studies, because they want to get a job or spend more time socialising, because they get injured, because they go through a bad patch, because they think that success doesn't happen to people like them and because they think that if they are not good enough for the Olympics then the sport has nothing to offer them. Some simply fall out of love with the sport, move on, or do other things with their lives. And that is perfectly fine. There are things that I did as a child that I no longer do, there are things that I realised that I wasn't very good at, and there are things that no longer interest me. 

But, the Irish team named on Tuesday disproves all the myths about where successful athletes come from or what they do with their lives. It proves that you don't have to give up on your academic goals to follow your sporting ones - Paul Pollock and Sara Treacy are both doctors; Mark English is working towards that goal; Ciara Evarard has studied physiotherapy; Michelle Finn will go straight into a block of teaching practice when she gets back from Rio. It proves that you can absolutely work full time and still be a top athlete - Kevin Seaward is a fulltime PE teacher, Breege Connolly works full time in software testing, and Lizzie Lee, a fulltime employee at Apple, recently said that she wouldn't have it any other way (yes, that's half our marathon runners with proper jobs!). It proves that it's not always the best juvenile athletes that make it big time - many of the team will not have been standout juveniles - only a few years ago Michelle was deemed not good enough to be sent to a European Cross Country Championships, now she's going to the Olympics. Indeed, Breege and Lizzie didn't even start to run until their late twenties. It shows that injuries can be overcome - before winning European bronze on Sunday, Ciara McGeehan, one of the true former junior standouts to make the team, had not worn an Irish vest for five years because of injury. 

But most of all, it proves that ordinary people, like you and me, can make it to the Olympics. 

And those of us that don't, can have a darn good time trying, and achieving our own 'Olympic' goals.

The closest I'm likely to get to an Olympics