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Episode 57: How To Create More "Friction" Between You And Your Email Inbox

When I was a kid, I used to LOVE it when it snowed. Snow days, sledding, building a snowman. So much fun!

But, when I turned 16, my love affair with snow ended. That’s because I had to start driving in the white stuff.

When you have a good set of snow tires and front wheel (or all wheel) drive, you can go pretty much anywhere. But, if you have a set of tires with no tread, you are going to have a bad day.

It’s all about friction. As you know, friction is “the resistance that one surface or object encounters when moving over another.”

Creating "friction" in your life can be an effective strategy for breaking bad habits and starting good ones. The idea is to make it more difficult to engage in your bad habits while making it easier to adopt more positive behaviors.

Your email inbox is a chronological list of everyone else’s priorities. As private school leaders, we spend way too much time dipping in and out of email all day long. We feel like we are being productive, but this is actually the least productive way that we can engage with our emails.

On today’s episode of the Private School Leader Podcast, we are going to discuss:

  • Why do I need to create friction between myself and my email inbox?
  • How can friction help me overcome the “False Productivity Trap”?
  • What are three ways that I can create more friction between myself and my email inbox?

I hope that you will listen to the podcast for your weekly dose of motivation, inspiration and PD. Thanks so much for listening and thanks for making a difference!

Mark Minkus

I want to say thank you for listening to the podcast by giving you a FREE GIFT. It is called The 7 Steps To Having Successful Meetings With Upset Parents. This guide is an 11 page pdf that gives you a step by step plan to have better meetings with the parents at your school. Every good coach has a game plan. Every good teacher has a lesson plan. Too many private school leaders don’t have a plan when they sit down to meet with an upset parent. Well, now you have a PLAN! You can grab this FREE GUIDE at www.theprivateschoolleader.com/meeting

I’ve created a free resource for you called “The 6 Things That Every Private School Teacher Wants From Their Leader”. This guide is a 6 page pdf that will be a game changer for you. I guarantee you that if you do these 6 things, the teachers at your school will be happy to follow you. You can pick up your free guide by going to www.theprivateschoolleader.com/guide

I want to give you a gift to say “thank you” for listening to the podcast. I have created a FREE guide for you called “5 Strategies To Help You Work With Difficult Parents”. We know that working with parents is part of the job and most of our parents are great, but some of them can be very demanding and emotional and difficult. This guide will give you the tools that you need to build better relationships and have better meetings with the difficult parents at your school. Go to www.theprivateschoolleader.com/parents to grab the guide. Thank you again for listening every week!

Please check out all of the free resources on my website that can help you serve and lead your school community. There are "Plug & Play PD's" (45 minute webinars with guided notes) as well as Top 10 Lists of Leadership Books, Productivity Books and TED Talks over at www.theprivateschoolleader.com/resources. You can grab the show notes for today's episode at www.theprivateschoolleader.com/episode57

If you have gotten value from listening to the podcast, I would love to work with you 1-on-1. I would love to take my experience and help you to feel less overwhelmed and frustrated or help you have success if you are a brand new leader. I also work with private school leaders who are aspiring Heads of School and want to accelerate their leadership growth or experienced leaders that are moving on to a new school and they want to get off to a great start. If I’m describing you, then head over to www.theprivateschoolleader.com/coaching to learn more about working with me 1-on-1.

Please write a review of this podcast and help the algorithm push this content out to more leaders. I would love to get your feedback about the podcast, ideas for future episodes and hear about how you are implementing these strategies in your life and at your school. You can email me at [email protected] Thanks!!


I’ve created a FREE RESOURCE for you called “The Top 6 Ways To Protect Your School From a Lawsuit”. This is a 10 page pdf that will help you to keep your staff and students safe and help keep your school out of court. Litigation is expensive, time consuming and extremely stressful. This common sense guide will help you to be more intentional and proactive when it comes to protecting your school. You can grab “The Top 6 Ways To Protect Your School From a Lawsuit” at www.theprivateschoolleader.com/lawsuit. Thanks!