DETERMINE when you will check and respond to email.  If you are like the average professional today – and you put this notion into practice, you can reduce the time you spend daily on email by nearly 50%.  Let’s look at this more carefully…

Reduce the number of times you check email - and certainly do not have it on ALL DAY. That is just inviting interruption, distraction, and wasteful expenditures of your time and energy.  Although I will not give you an absolute number, if you can get away with once a day, then do so, For most professionals, 3 – 5 times per day will suffice. This means that regardless of whether you’re checking email at the office or on your iPhone, Blackberry, or whatever, DO NOT check more often than once per hour.  Here’s a second aspect of ‘determine:’

Determine your own energy clock and set times for working with email that are in sync with your level of productivity. If you are maximally sharp first thing in the morning, ask yourself if it makes sense for you to be using that most focused, productive time on your email. And please note:  there are so many different types of email – and if you’ve determined that some of them require significant mental sharpness and creativity, then address those during your best times.

Don’t sit down to ‘work on your email’ unless you actually have the energy and time to make decisions.  You may have observed others (or yourself) as they sit down to ‘work on’ email.  They open an email, read it, don’t do anything about it because either they don’t have time or they don’t have the energy, and then they just click on the next one. This is an outrageous way to ‘spend’ your precious time – because you’ve accomplished nothing.

Right now, determine how many times each day are sane and sensible for you to be checking your email.  1, 3, 5…maybe 7.  No more than that.  And know that you may very well need to educate those around you about your practice and your recommendation for their email practices.  The more we are all productive…the more we are all productive. 

And if you would like additional ways of getting and staying productive, then please 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!

Get it into your head before you ever sit down to work on your email that you are a decision maker! If you aren’t ready to make decisions then don’t even get started. Because decision-making is a major aspect of being sane and sensible in your email practices, trying to work on email when you are emotionally and intellectually exhausted is not wise and in fact, is ridiculous.

Know this: It takes a certain amount of energy to make decisions, doesn’t it? And often, professionals don’t think of email as an area of their work that involves MANY decisions. If you’re not up to making decisions, then don’t open your email because all you will do is dink around (a technical phrase) in there and leave a lot of clutter. Remember, as Barbara Hemphill says, “Clutter is postponed decisions.(R)”

So, be decisive. When you sit down to process email, decide to decide. Be decisive. It’s

• Yes,
• No,
• Keep,
• Save,
• Answer,
• Ignore, and
• So forth.

There really are a limited number of decisions – but you really do have to make one of them (at least!) for each email in your in-box. You can decide to delete, to defer, to do (what a concept!), or to delegate it to someone else. Make decisions. That’s what leaders do.

Get it?  Decide to decide.  If you have the energy, go to our email right now and see how many clear decisions you can make in 10 minutes.  Make that your habit. 

And if you would like additional ways of getting and staying productive, then please 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!