E-mail key #3: Limit your e-mail checking
“Hang on, I’ll get back to you in a minute. I just need to check my e-mail”
How often have you heard this in modern working environments? Checking one’s e-mail has assumed similar importance to eating and visiting the bathroom. Unfortunately, falling into this habit means you have become a slave to e-mail. And the reality is that this problem is getting worse with the emergence of mobile e-mail solutions, such as the Blackberry.
Here are some ways to get this under control:
1. Make a conscious decision NOT to check your e-mail while you are working on a specific task. Ask yourself this question: “What could possibly go wrong if I don’t check my mail while I finish this task?”. Many of us have allowed ourselves to be conditioned into thinking we are not being ‘effective’ if we’re not alert and responding to mail as it arrives. Trust me – the e-mail can wait.
2. Turn off all types of beeps, jingles, alerts, pop-ups and taskbar icons. These are a lethal source of distraction. I guess we started out on the wrong path back in the innocent 90s when AOL introduced the male voice alert “You’ve got mail” to signal the arrival of a new e-mail. Hollywood even made a movie on the back of it! This may be ok if you’re getting a small number every day and they tend to be nice, heartfelt messages from friends and family. But when you’re getting 200+ messages from all sources….
Exhibit A is your typical Microsoft Outlook pop-up window. This comes accompanied by the now ubiquitous chime. I enjoy watching interviews with office-bound people on TV news programmes just to hear that occasional familiar sound in the background. And the most concerning thing about it is that these come as part of the standard setting. You actually have to dig into the application to find where to turn these things off! And we can’t just blame Microsoft for these. Gmail also advertises the Gmail Notifier – a little application that will pop up similar windows in the corner of your screen.
3. Try to limit your e-mail checking to fixed times every day. This is a great way to replace an old unproductive habit with a new productive one. There is a school of thought that suggests that checking your e-mail should never be the first thing you do every day, given the possibility of potential distraction. This is good advice but it requires clarification between checking and processing e-mail. Let’s define checking e-mail as scanning what’s in your mailbox to see if there’s anything there that requires immediate action – and this should be restricted to “life/death” matters (something that’s really important to your customer or career). Processing involves the systematic review of each item to determine the next action. Some people can prosper by processing their e-mail just once a day.
Here’s a useful experiment for you. At the start of your next working day, leave a blank piece of paper on your desk. Each time you find yourself checking your e-mail, note it on the page. I do believe you will be surprised at how many notes are on that page at day’s end.