Yes you!
Be honest and admit it!
Your mail is open!
It is open all the time!
You have to ready every mail as soon as it hits your
mailbox!
It’s a bad – it makes you context switch all the time and
not be truly focused on your work. Even if you just delete the new mail you
have still lost focus on your current work, it will take you few seconds to
come back to the same state of mind as before. Now multiply those seconds by
the number of your incoming emails every day. Some of those mails will take
more than just few seconds, they can make you work for several minutes in order
to reply (or just read that not important stuff that your boss writes).
That is a huge waste!!! And why?
“Maybe that is an important mail?”
“Maybe my replay is essential immediately?”
No! If it was really important and your reply was truly
essential as soon as possible you would be called to your cellphone or someone
would even come and meet you face to face in your office.
The levels of ‘Important’:
1.
End of the world important
message and the reply as essential right now– meet that person face to face
2.
End of the world important message
and the reply as essential right now (impossible to meet face to face) –
call his or her cellphone
3.
Very important message and
reply is important as soon as possible– call the office
4.
Very important message but
the reply is not essential right now – send a text message
5.
The reply is not essential
right away – send an email
You see? Someone will email you if he doesn’t need your
reply right away. Now then you know it – CLOSE IT!
Your outlook or whatever email should be open only 4
times a day:
1.
When you come to your
office in the morning
2.
Before you hit lunch
3.
After you come back from lunch
4.
Before you go home
During all the other time in your day – keep it closed!
It's ok that you have unread email. You got 4 times a day to sort it and read it. It's more than enough.
Good.
Back to work ;)