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Never Check Email
By Brick | December 29, 2008
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I know, that’s just silly. How about this instead: don’t check email in the morning? I watched a great video featuring Julie Morgenstern, the author of, coincidentally enough, Never Check E-Mail In the Morning: And Other Unexpected Strategies for Making Your Work Life Work:
This idea of not checking email in the morning plays off of the idea of working on one’s Most Important Task before all else, and/or doing the most difficult challenging thing first (as in to Eat That Frog). One thing I liked in the interview was Julie discussing the traits of poor workers:
- Inaccessibility: This is the boss that is never around, but it can also be the employee who always puts others off, or who can never have an impromptu meeting or call.
- Not Walking the Talk: We think that saying "yes" to everything may makes us agreeable and nice, but in fact, if saying yes to everything causes us not to be able to come through on some items, we are doing significant damage to our credibility.
- Multitasking: I’ve written on this before. However, multitasking also includes responding to email, or surfing the Internet while on a call, or responding to the Blackberry during a meeting.
- Clutter: This is not about what is looks like, but really about whether it is functional. If you can find what you need immediately, you don’t have "clutter". If you cannot find things, consider reading Getting Things Done.
I have not read Julie’s book yet, but it is definitely on my list of books to check out.
Popularity: 71% [?]
Topics: Email |
January 11th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Not checking Emails won’t really work in the time we live now. But not checking it as much as we probably do is a very good advice. Personally I check Emails only 3 times a day: at 10am, 2pm and 5pm. This works very well for me so far.
The other important thing is: HOW WE HANDLE OUR INBOX. There’s lots of time to be safed here to. If you’re interested I wrote a blog post about it:
http://lifestyledesign.ch/productivity/mail_rules/
Have a great week and keep up the good work.
Mike