How To Keep Email From Ruining Your Productivity

How To Keep Email From Ruining Your Productivity

Summary: Email is one of the greatest innovations of the online world, but if youre not careful it will suck up your time, and be a far detriment to your business than a benefit.

Here are some tips for taming the email beast.

Turn It Off

During the day when youre working, turn off your email client. You dont need to be connected to everyone at all times of the day. If you leave your email client running while youre trying to work, as soon as that next new message come...

email, productivity, time, management, tips, business

Article Body: Email is one of the greatest innovations of the online world, but if youre not careful it will suck up your time, and be a far detriment to your business than a benefit.

Here are some tips for taming the email beast.

Turn It Off

During the day when youre working, turn off your email client. You dont need to be connected to everyone at all times of the day. If you leave your email client running while youre trying to work, as soon as that next new message comes in, youll get distracted. The constant barrage of new incoming email will break you concentration and make a project that would normally take only an hour of focused attention take four or five times as long.

Check It Infrequently

Once youve managed to turn your email client off, resist the temptation to keep turning it back on all day. Checking your email once or twice a day is plenty really.

Schedule Email Time

If you typically get a lot of email correspondence that you need to reply to throughout the day, then schedule half an hour or an hour as replying to email time. Take care of all the email you need to reply to at once. Youll find that by being able to put your focused attention to taking care of email, your replies will be thought out better, and youll be able to get all of your email taken care of far more quickly and efficiently.

Spam Filters

A good spam filter really can be a productivity tool. Fortunately, theyre readily available and surprisingly accurate these days. Put one on your inbox so that youre not spending your time trying to filter out all the spam before you ever start replying to the legitimate emails.

Get A Personal Assistant Or Customer Support

If you really get a lot of email and a lot of it doesnt require your personal attention i.e. someone trained in your business could just as easily reply to it, then get yourself a personal assistant or customer support person who will take care of almost all the email and only forward the essential messages to you. This will free up your time to focus on far more important tasks like finding more customers and making money.