If you can avoid being distracted by your email, it will be like adding an extra hour to your day. Find out why this is something you should do and how to accomplish it.
1The Downside of Email
Email is a huge distraction and it absolutely kills your productivity. Most people check their email constantly throughout the day.
Each time you stop what you are doing to check your email, it breaks your concentration. That means it will take a few minutes to get back into the project you were working on.
Think about how much time you spend on email if you check it every 15 minutes. Not only to you disrupt whatever you were working on, but you probably glance at the same messages each time before deciding if you are ready to respond to them yet.
It’s a huge waste of time.
2How to Beat Email Distraction
The easiest and best way for you to be more efficient and more productive is to kill the email distraction and only handle it one time each day.
This will be painful for some people, but you will very quickly experience the benefits. You will have better concentration on whatever you are working on and you will have more time to spend on other important tasks.
The best way to get this process started is to set up an auto responder to notify your co-workers of your new email policy.
Here are a few examples:
In an effort to increase my productivity and efficiency I am beginning a new personal email policy. I’ve recently realized I spend more time shuffling through my inbox and less time focused on the task at hand. It has become an unnecessary distraction that ultimately creates longer lead times on my ever-growing ‘to do’ list.
I will only be checking, and responding to emails at 4 PM each afternoon.
If you have a time sensitive issue that need an immediate response, please don’t hesitate to contact me via phone. Thanks
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Thanks for your email. Due to my current workload, I will only be checking my email at 4 PM each day. If there is anything that you need to discuss more urgently, please contact me via phone. Thanks and have a great day!
3Why It’s Better
The reason that it is saves you so much time is because you are batching similar tasks together. If you check your email every 15 minutes, you have to stop what you are doing, click over to the program, find the items that are new and decide if you will respond to them or delete them.
Then you have to click back over to whatever you were working on, remember what you were doing, remember what step you were at and get back in that mindset.
It is much more efficient to do this one time per day instead of dozens. Anytime you can batch together tasks that are similar instead of spreading them out, you will be more efficient.
4Train Others
Your auto responder will handle most of this training, however you will need to reinforce this with your co-workers at the beginning. If someone tells you they will send you an email, remind them that you will look at it during your scheduled email time.
5Train Yourself
It may actually be more difficult to train yourself than it will be to train other people about your new email policy.
When you hear the little noise that indicates you have a new message, it will be very difficult to ignore it.
After all, it could be something important, right? Wrong. Your auto-responder already told everyone that if it’s something important, they need to call you.
The best way to handle this is to completely close your email program.
6What About Back and Forth Messages?
One question that sometimes comes up is about those email messages that seem to need 10+ back and forth message to get the issue resolved. If you only answer it once per day then it will take almost two weeks for the issue to be resolved.
This is actually an example of when you shouldn’t be using email in the first place. You are wasting the time of two people. Pick up the phone and talk to the person. It will save you both a lot of time.
7Stop Email Distraction and Take Control of Your Day
Following the steps outlined above will help you take back control over your day. You won’t be a slave to your email any longer. You will handle it more efficiently, which means you will have more time to spend on all of the other things you should be doing!
What Do You Think?
Do you have any other tips for avoiding email distraction?
Share with your friends!
