Email. Texts. IMs. You are bombarded with communications throughout the day. Some of these communications are actually important, and a whole lot more of them are not important at all. Yet, if you’re like most people, you check email at least 15 times a day and you likely look at a text or IM immediately after you hear your alarm notification.
This constant checking of communications is terrible for your productivity and basically wipes out a lot of time each day. Forbes even ran an article on the subject entitled, “The Way You Check Email is Making You Less Productive.”
Let’s talk about email specifically since this is the main culprit that kills time, undoes your concentration, and stops you from gaining forward momentum on projects that are truly important to you.
You can choose when to check your email and when to respond to it. There is no law saying that you have to reply to emails immediately. You can put them on a schedule that is successful for you and your needs.
Try this:
First, tell everyone important in your life that you’re only going to check your email and reply to emails 3 times a day.
Then, set up a schedule for checking email that sounds good to you. A common schedule for people using this strategy is this: (1) in the morning, (2) midday or afternoon, and (3) in the evening.
That’s it. No more being pulled away from something important by a long list of email messages, most of which don’t need your reply. No more back and forth between projects and emails. No more wondering where the day went. No more checking email right before you go to bed.
Leave all the craziness behind and create the hours in the day you need to do something important! Limiting your exposure to email will seem to manufacture more time.
