Time Management: Email
Email is one of those things that always seems like it’s going to be quick, but that ultimately eats away huge chunks of your day as you keep breaking your momentum on another task in order to respond to something or read the information that just landed in your Inbox.
The single most important tip I’ve gotten for time management at work has been to schedule email time every day, use that time only to respond to email, refusing all other interruptions, and dealing with email only during that time of the day. This takes a mental shift in a couple of ways:
- Other people tend to think that it’s okay to interrupt you at this time of day. Treat it no differently than you would treat being on the phone responding to voicemail messages that you’ve received.
- People who’ve sent email often seem to expect an immediate response, and that makes all of those unread messages seem like a higher priority than they really are. Remember that although the information may get to you faster, you’re still a human being at the other end who has to find the time to respond to what you receive.
- When you’re looking at all of the messages all at once, you can more easily and accurately assess your priorities. When you have fifty messages in front of you, it will force you to delegate or dismiss twenty five tasks that you really don’t have time for. If you’re looking at three messages, it can seem a lot easier just to do them yourself on the spot, until suddenly you realize that you’ve lost half the day to tasks that you otherwise would have delegated or deleted.
Choose a time of day when you’re less likely to have interruptions anyway, mark the time on your calendar and refuse to answer your phone, except for an emergency. Then close your Inbox for the rest of the day, and keep yourself focused on other tasks.
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