One teeny, tiny little thing you may do many times a day can be robbing your business of it’s most valuable asset – your focus.
In today’s world, focus is a fleeting thing. We zip from one thing to the next, often multitasking like maniacs. We’re watching TV while checking in with friends on Twitter and Facebook. We are checking our email while standing in line at the grocery store. We are busy and multitasking has become a way of life. Actually it has become THE way of life.
Sometimes, we need to turn off the multitasking and focus on our biz. And it is hard, because we are so used to multitasking, it has become ingrained into our work habits. We need to consciously try and turn off all of the noise and focus.
In a short little paragraph in the October issue of Real Simple magazine, it says that women on average spend 20 minutes trying to get their focus back after being distracted by email. 20 whole minutes. One third of an hour. Wow.
How many times a day do you check your email? I check mine about 40 kajillion* times, which means I am distracted up to 800 zillion* minutes (*numbers may not be accurate) in one day. I know that I lose focus for more than 20 minutes a day for sure. Are you making the 20 minute mistake too?
I have read suggestions of ways to avoid this problem such as:
- turn off any noises or notifiers that you have new email
- only allow yourself to check email at scheduled intervals
- use a program that blocks access to certain programs
- only check email a few times a week
- have your VA check your email for you and eliminate the unnecessary ones
I have tried the first three, but I do not have enough willpower to only check a few times a day. In fact I have checked my email 7 times in the time it has taken me to write this post. SEVEN! Yes, I have a problem. I tried a program to block gmail, but it blocked all of google, and I often need that helpful little site 😉 Checking email a few times a week is for someone far more zen than me and I long for the day I have a VA.
I am going to strive to eliminate the 20 minute mistake from my work life, by keeping gmail open in another browser window when I am checking email and then shutting it down while I am focusing on a task.
Do you make the 20 minute mistake? What can you do to help get it under control? Do you think eliminating the mistake will impact your indie biz?
Very interesting!! I know I check my email constantly throughout the day. It’s hard not to…. In addition, I’m checking @ replies through Twitter & Facebook comments!
I have read the whole “check email twice a day” stuff from time management ‘experts’ as well, but I think that’s a load of crap. I think that doing that can actually do more harm than good… What if a reporter wanted to interview you ASAP? If they emailed you at 10am and you didn’t check your email until 4pm, you would have lost out on that interview.
Not every email requires immediate attention, of course, but there are some that do! I think that your plan of keeping email open in a new tab, so that you can easily access it, but not get totally distracted by it is the way to go!
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I work with Realtors so checking my email only 2 or 3 times a day is not an option. I think keeping it open in a separate tab means it only takes 10 seconds to see if there’s anything new, and if you have a program like Microsoft Outlook Webmail, you get a pop-up notifier that something new has come in.
The trick is training yourself to either check your email when you see the notifier or at a reasonable interval – in my case about every 15 minutes.
What’s worse? Having your email also come in on your blackberry/mobile so you have that to check too!
“They” say the notifications turn us into Pavlov’s dogs but there isn’t really an ideal situation is there? You either get interrupted or you may miss a very important email (like your realtors). For me interruption is the lesser of the two evils, but I really do need to keep a handle on my obsessive email checking habit 🙂
That is very true Crissy, missing important emails could be much worse for your business than being “productive”. My grandma is very sick in the hospital and not checking email at least every 30 minutes is not an option. We all hve to find a happy medium for what works best for us and our biz. 🙂
I would be out of business as a Virtual Assistant if I didn’t constantly check my emails but I use MailWasher Pro (they have a fanstastic free version too), and I check ALL my email accounts, as well as my clients’, in one fell swoop and can delete spam before I open Outlook.
I would be out of business as a Virtual Assistant if I didn’t constantly check my emails but I use MailWasher Pro (they have a fanstastic free version too), and I check ALL my email accounts, as well as my clients’, in one fell swoop and can delete spam before I open Outlook and see if there’s something I have to answer immediately.
Christie- love your stats on how you check email! 😉
Enjoyed reading comments on the topic of checking email and wanted to share as well…Unless you are getting paid specifically to check email constantly, then it is impeding your productivity- period.
1. Work to remove the ‘urgent’ expectation from email- Communicate with your colleagues about how they can reach you in an emergency and manage urgent matters outside of email. A great tool for assisting with this is https://www.awayfind.com. It will allow you to get out of the inbox and be more productive.
2. For some, it is unrealistic to check email twice a day…but it’s also unrealistic to check it every time you hear a ding. So, try to reach some middle ground. If you’re currently checking every five minutes or less, set a timer for 30 minutes to focus on a project outside your email inbox. Progress, not perfection.
3. Consider also the costs of checking email constantly. Try being fully present and engaged in the conversation or meeting. How does it make you feel when you meet with someone who is constantly checking email?
4. It’s about having a system you trust- when you cherry pick through email, important but not urgent messages can get lost in the shuffle and you get in the mode of ‘putting out fires’. Create a system that helps you identify the task related to the message, order your priorities and allows you to concentrate on what truly should have your focus.