Life Of E's

Keep your email OFF for long periods of time each day.  And note:  This is not an anti-email post.  It is a pro-productivity approach. 

We have all ignored priorities while we fiddled away your day…on distractions such as email.  Believe me, I know this because I’ve done it myself (more than once!!)

Let this post enhance your awareness of the times you are doing this.  In the future, if you have something that you need to be working on and you start thinking, ”I better check my E-mail,” recognize that this is a pure procrastination technique. Use your phone, PDA, oven timer, or any other timer you have available and set it for a period of time, e.g., 15 minutes.  Then, tell yourself, “All right, I’m now going to power through as many emails as I can.” Handle them, handle them, handle them. Make the decisions about your emails as needed.  At the end of 15 minutes turn off your email because you know it’s not your number one priority. Then get back to the other type of work – marketing, workshops, anything like that – that you really need to be doing.

Another technique that works super well for me – and I started doing this when I was still a professor – is establishing what I called ”productivity days,” which every day ought to be. You need these when you are feeling pressed and need to be hyper-productive.  At the top of the hour, turn off your email and then work, work, work, work on everything else you need to do until ten minutes until the hour, knowing you’ve now accomplished 50 solid minutes of phone calls, writing, budgeting, or whatever needs to be happening. At ten minutes until the next hour, turn your email back on knowing that, sure enough, some has come in.  Then power through as much as you can in 8 minutes (leaving 2 minutes for the restroom and a drink of water!)

There’s a pattern I hope you start to notice.  If you leave on your email all day, it takes you all day to handle it.  If you ‘batch’ your email, it will take you only a small portion of each day to handle.  You’re much more peacefully productive this way.  Guaranteed!

And for more tips to keep moving forward on your goals for peaceful productivity, join others (worldwide) who receive Meggin’s weekly emails (and see what is available for download at no cost at the following websites):

**Top Ten Productivity Tips (http://www.TopTenProductivityTips.com)

**Keys to Keeping Chaos at Bay (http://www.KeepingChaosatBay.com)

(c) 2009 by Meggin McIntosh, Ph.D., “The Ph.D. of Productivity”(tm). Through her company, Emphasis on Excellence, Inc., Meggin McIntosh changes what people know, feel, dream, and do. Sound interesting? It is!

• 

Tags: email, priorities, Productivity, time, timer