How to stay focused by reducing email
We all know the evils of social media - at least as far as easily encroaching into your productive time. The bunny trails of infinity pools of content that draw you down into distraction. But as career-minded business people, we are unlikely to be surfing Facebook at work. In business, the biggest distraction trap we have is email. Email is truly evil!
Imagine that you have your to-do list planned out for maximum productivity for the day. You have your highest value work planned for your most energetic time, and you have some quieter time after lunch planned for those routine, mundane tasks that still need to get done. And then you walk into your office, sit down and check your email. You feel that you must respond to this client and that one, and soon the first few hours of your morning has been reacting to the urgencies of others through email.
You have let others write on your to-do list with a higher priority than anything you have already planned. Look deep inside yourself. Is this something you do? Can you feel the resistance rising in yourself justifying the time you spend on email - after all, most of our businesses are customer facing - and the customer always needs a response! Or do they?
Email - the next infinity pool
Email can quickly become an infinity pool of checking and responding to other people. I noticed this for myself some time ago. I had deleted my social media from my phone but was sitting on the couch with my wife. We had just finished dinner, and I caught myself picking up my phone to check my email. I have a lot of projects with specific email accounts associated with them. However, it was unlikely that anything urgent was going to come in by email that was more important than spending time with my family. Anyone needing to get hold of me for anything important had my phone number. But there was something cathartic about reaching for my phone and checking. I realized that it was an action, an addiction if you will, and not a valuable activity.
I deleted email from my phone. And I schedule email blocks in my day. A quick review in the morning - mostly for my peace-of-mind, see there is nothing urgent. I plan a block of time before lunch for me to review email and respond. And I schedule a little more time at the end of the day for another review of email and follow up on any outstanding items. I close email between scheduled reviews and don’t check it. I use a task manager outside of email for tasks that I need to do, and I make it to inbox zero every day. I have NO emails in my inbox. They are all categorized according to my GTD workflow, and I know what action I need to take for any open loops.
Can you say the same? How would you feel if you didn’t have to live by email? Let me ask you - can your emails wait 3 hours for you to respond? Try it for a week. If you are uncomfortable with the idea, set an autoresponder with your cell phone number for essential calls. See how many people call you. You will be surprised at how much importance we give emails that the senders don’t. We don’t need to react immediately. A short window of delay is fine for 99% of people. And that extra 1 %, they probably already have a better way to get hold of you.
What would you do with the extra time?
If you had 2 or 3 hours of super productive, uninterrupted time every day, how much more productive do you think you will be? Try scheduling email for a week. Shut down your email client between time blocks. And see how much more productive you truly are.