I work with and coach a lot of busy and successful people and one thing they always ask for support on is trying to get everything done when the tasks feel never ending.
One manager very recently was telling me that by 10am in the morning they would already have about 30-40 new emails in their inbox and that's not counting the other couple of hundred they hadn't been able to get onto yet, they just can't seem to get on top of it.......Does this sound familiar to you? This is something that we can all relate to in some way and I think that part of the problem with emails sometimes is that it's too easy for us to access now it creates the 'always on duty' mentality.
We now spend over 41% of our day locked to our emails either trying to manage them, find emails or reply to them which in turn has a massive impact on how productive we are and also how motivated or stressed we feel.
Let me ask you a question how often do you check your emails in a day?..........Once, three times or a lot more? We don't need a survey to tell us that email is invading all aspects of our lives but just to add a bit of weight behind this subject nearly *70% of us in the UK are constantly checking emails in and out of work.........Ask yourself why you do this; Is it expected of you from your boss? Is it just a habit or is it because the volume of them makes you feel you can't get everything done? To start to look at ways of working more productively we need to get to the route of the problem first.............
I know what your thinking; that it's not possible to work differently and that you've tried it all before? The answer is that you can and by making small steps you can notice a huge different in your productivity it comes down to wanting to make the change.
I think we would all agree that ways of reducing stress and making us more productive is not something any of us would ignore, so don't ignore these tips:
There are some mindset changes required to implement the right system that will wean you off your email addiction and encourage you to develop an addiction to decisiveness and productivity instead. Happy Days :)
- Your inbox is not your to do list, I repeat it is not your to do list. We tend to try to keep emails in our inbox because we don't want to lose them or we want it as a reference point. The irony of this is what normally happens is we either lose them or spend hours trying to find them again...Correct? With everything then living in your inbox how do you know what you can ignore and what you need to do, this can become a big confused mess.......Believe me I know first hand I once had 2,700 emails in my inbox! Find a system that works for you that stops things living in your inbox. 'How to be a Productivity Ninja' by Graham Allcott has some great email tips. Paperback version – BUY HERE
- Don't let your email distract you with lots of potentially exciting stuff. Checking it too often can mean your always in your inbox, turn off all sounds and graphics so that you go into your email when your ready rather than being pulled in every 5 minutes. Have discipline with this, the company won't crumble because your not checking your emails for an hour.
- Make a subtle change which will change the way you look at your inbox. Don't just check your email and leave them there make a decision about where they need to go to create a bit of memontum. They will only come out of your inbox if you decide the logical next step. Without this it will sit in your inbox with all the others you're not sure what to do with. Time to break the habit
- Make a bit of time to follow up, double check and clean up. Measure how effective your system is working each week. Why not make your first review to be about your current system how is that working for you on a scale of 1-10?
*Stats Source - Xobni, Harris Interactive
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