Control your email – don’t let it control you!
Are you familiar with that little chime that goes off every 10 minutes? And the little envelope that appears on your screen down next to the time? Yep – Outlook (or Outlook Express) has just automatically checked your email for you and promptly alerted you that you have new mail.
Funny – if people could avoid a phone interruption, they would, but for some reason choose to be interrupted by email!
Think about how many times a day you get interrupted by a new email message. How much time do you lose? By the time you stop what you’re doing, check your mail, respond to it, get back to what you were doing, figure out where you were up to before you got interrupted… Get the idea? Every 10 minutes!
And really, how important was the message anyway?
Take back control
A better idea from a time management perspective is to turn off the automatic checking feature in your email program. That way, you can get your task done (in probably half the time) and then manually check your mail between tasks rather than during them.
Add it up – you’d be surprised how much time you’ll save. Not to mention your sanity as well!