Email: Pandora's (In) Box

Know More: Email 2.0, Email

The reason not to check your email last thing at night, as LifeDev says, is the same as why you shouldn't check it first thing in the morning: because it's time consuming. Yes, it distracts you from your *real* work too.

But a big reason that it's a problem is that people think they will just do a quick scan to see what's there, so they budget 1 minute to do that. There's always time for that, right? In reality, there's almost always something in your email that, once you've seen it, you have to do something about, and that's bound to take you more than one minute.

Now, if you could really discipline yourself merely to look at the subject lines of each email and then move on to something else, you'd be free to check often, early and late. However, if you're only going to do that, why bother checking at all? Aren't you checking to make sure there's nothing that needs your attention right now? If you don't find anything, great. But if you do, well, there goes your morning, or your bedtime.

If you change your mindset to "I need to check email because I have to handle anything important that's come in," instead of "I need to check email to make sure nothing important is in there," you'll be more realistic about how long it will take.

This rule goes for snail mail too. Don't pick up your mail if you only have time to riffle through the envelopes and chuck them on the table. Leave yourself at least enough time to separate out the trash (and actually recycle or shred it--don't let that shredding pile up!), put bills with other bills, put items you need to act on in your in box to process them later.

once again, Claire, truer words were never spoken. I love how you summarize things that are plaguing me, you have been a true inspiration. Thank you.

Jessica Duquette

Posted by: Jessica Duquette | August 12, 2006 10:16 AM | Permalink to Comment

» Can't Live Without Email? These Companies Can Kill You Every Friday from ProductivityGoal
No matter how many people find it as one of the most helpful online business tools, email can also be a productive businessperson's nemesis. Aside from email spam, viruses and spyware that can be downloaded, checking email can also become... [Read More]

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