📬Get Free: It’s time for FAM Mail

Issue 11: You asked, the Get Free Fam answered

Author

Joanne GP
August 15, 2025

Hello, hello! It’s #getfreefriday!

How you doing, Get Free Fam? Drinking your water? Minding your business? Getting your sunlight? Sharing ridiculous memes in the group chats? Check, check, check annnnnd, CHECK!

Speaking of checking things off, this week I followed some Get Free advice and did something I very rarely do: I got on these here interwebs and made an IG video … with my face in it. It was lowkey terrifying, but I recorded it (OK, I made two versions), posted it and moved on with my day without overthinking it. Some of you shared, and some of you subscribed as a result, so THANK YOU and also WELCOME!

If you also did something way out of your comfort zone this week, feel free to share your win. In the meantime I’m sending high fives and applause, and remember to clap 👏🏿 for 👏🏿 your 👏🏿 self!

Anywho..

I have been waiting all week for this issue to drop, so much so I almost became an honorary member of The Pointer Sisters (IYKYK)

Squeal!

SO, WHAT’S ALL THE EXCITEMENT ABOUT?

Every Friday since early June I’ve slid into the DMs sharing stories of getting free along with general shenanigans and recommendations for books, pods and music. But this issue is all YOURS!

Because many of you have questions and comments about getting free and work, I’m sharing a small selection of submissions around this topic, but you KNOW there will be more FAM Mail in the future. Y’all are too funny and we don’t gatekeep around here! You can email [email protected] or submit via this form. Sadly my carrier pigeon hook up isn’t available right now, but next time, I gotchu. 

Yea, I don’t know either…

QUESTION ONE: HOW DO I GET FREE FROM EMAIL?

So let’s start with Issue 4 - Make Delete your BFF. This was all about liberating yourself from an overladen inbox and getting to zero unread messages. I started out with around 24000 emails across multiple addresses. But GFF Natalie had me beat:

“Unread emails?  More than 30k 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️ not only do I hang my head in shame but yes, the head space it takes up is immense. Knowing that I received an email but it got lost in the junk just saps you. Do we really NEED all these emails?”

No, GFF Natalie. We.Do.Not. Because of this overwhelm she’s ready to DITCH the work email correspondence, but isn’t sure how. GFF Nathan chimed in with this advice:

“Slack is your best friend. Emails are only for external facing messages and when I’m really trying to get work done I’ll put on an OOO letting my team know I’m unavailable until a certain time. If something’s really urgent I’ll get a call, but otherwise folks KNOW that their email emergency is NOT mine and they have to wait. We don’t work for the ambulance service. Nothing is ever that urgent.”

GFF Anita didn’t so much have advice about reducing email, but more of a warning:

“People treat email threads at work like receipts - just there to catch you out or to prove a point when things get ugly. Some emails are worth keeping. You never know when you might need them because colleagues can be messy.”

Damn. But, also, she’s not wrong…

Before we move on from emails, GFF Shana wrote in with a counterpoint to living a zero inbox life, removing unwanted subscriptions and all the unnecessary stuff:

“I like having a long deep archive that in Gmail is very searchable. My bff/biz partner was looking for some old contacts to reach out to and found some great email correspondence with business friends she'd lost touch with - so she used that sort of nostalgia connection to renew the relationship and pick up where they last left off.”

Hmmm, hadn’t thought of that. It’s so much easier to send a reconnection email than making a phone call after years of no contact (which isn’t terrible, but depending on the person, could be at best awkward and at worst flat out creepy.)

OK, WE HANDLED EMAILS, WHAT’S NEXT?

We’re going to stay with GFF Natalie (and GFF Maria who messaged in with a similar comment about getting free from email’s annoying cousin who just LOVES to drop in at the most inconvenient time…)

“Over the past 2 months I have been in meetings for 70-80% of my week. It is just not productive.”

80%?! Zoinks! In a 40 hour week, that’s (does math) 32 hours! Who’s got that kind of time? Woof. GFF Iola is serious about keeping her calendar booked and (not) busy:

“One thing that helps cut down meetings is to pre-book your calendar by setting up recurring blocked off time for everything from lunch to focused work time. This includes blocking off time at the beginning and end of your day to check and respond to emails, set up or close down the day, and finish up or start work before your meetings begin. Leave a good chunk of the free time as available for no more than 30 minutes consecutively.”

See, this is smart. When you only keep slithers of time available for meetings, suddenly folks aren’t slapping “a quick chat” on your calendar, and that meeting becomes … an email :)

What am I taking from this? Boundaries, friends, boundaries. Get Free from giving people time you won’t ever get back. GFF Natalie, let us know how you get on!

QUESTION THREE: HOW CAN GUILTY PLEASURES SET YOU FREE?

Staying in the workplace, in Issue 6 we tackled how to love your guilty pleasures and get free by not hiding who we are and what we like. This was written during a work trip to Philadelphia and seeing colleagues pull down the corporate mask and act like regular people. GFF Rei reflected on this part of the post:

“It’s been different. Dinner dates have been full of genuine laughs, real talk and a lot of getting free has been happening. It’s like everyone is done with putting on a front that everything is OK and remaining self contained. We all realized that even within the confines of work - or ESPECIALLY within the confines of work - we need each other. We also need to be US - turning up as whole people with thoughts, opinions and random quirks. Being all buttoned up and corporate ain’t it, it’s not the way to go.”

Rei had this to share: 

“I resonate with this SO much. I’ve never been able to be that buttoned-up corporate person — always been the person to show up as myself, for better or worse (and often it is worse). Never been able to fit in with everyone else with my outspokenness, and I feel everyone else starting to do it too now, which is a relief. Validating. Freeing. I wonder how much of freedom is purely validation and the relief that comes with that?”

To round us out on guilty pleasures GFF Dorian left it all on the field (much better than my obsession with bad dating shows):

“I love watching all kinds of soccer. Yes, the high quality (Premier League, La Liga), but even the low-grade kind, the battles, the drama, the fights over who's on the starting team, who gets sub'd out, and, what?! The coach spurred the other coach and walked right past him? The soccer pitch is a whole theater of drama and running and kicking the ball is only part of it!

But I love the bigger picture you're getting at: embrace ALL parts of ourselves and let go of shame and internalized ridicule! Peace…”

No gate or goal-keeping going on here…

WE DON’T GATEKEEP!

Thanks to everyone who reached out - there’s plenty more where this issue came from and I’ll sprinkle questions into future issues of The Get Free Guide. I hope you found some of the responses helpful!

For now I’ll end with a question from GFF Nadia about moving forward and gaining traction when it feels like you’re being unproductive. You can help Nadia by emailing [email protected] or submit your comments here:

“Beyond the platitudes, the IG posts, the self-help: has there been a time when you've hit upon something that got you going, that helped you get unstuck, or that reduced the overwhelm into a manageable step that led to something that felt you were on your way just that little bit more?”

🚀Get Your Life: Things to read, listen to, enjoy🚀

📚What I’m reading: Actually, this recommendation came in from GFF Sharon; Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell. Support local bookstores if you decide to purchase the paper copy. My favorite is Octavia’s Bookshelf in Pasadena, CA

🎧What’s on the pod: More of a watch, but NPR’s Tiny Desk with Omar Lye-Fook is 🔥. “There’s Nothing Like This” sounds just as fresh now as it did 35 years ago.

🎵 Soundtrack for the week: I’ve been deep into Work LoFi this week!

✨ If you’ve got a recommendation drop me a line. ✨

A SMALL FAVOR

A few technical glitches were flagged to me last week. If you received this email, could you hit “reply” and just write “got it!” Trying to see if I need to get on beehiiv’s case about deliveries. Thank you much!

You can keep up with The Get Free Guide on Instagram and feel free to share the love with a friend. We don’t gatekeep around here!

See you next Friday!