Category: Productivity

Turn It Off…

Remember Covey's 7 Habits lesson on Urgent vs. Important? Think about this fact from: Quick tips on processing your email inbox

Zen slap: An email auto-check set for every minute means 60 potential distractions every hour, or almost 500 per day. Look back at a week of your emails and ask yourself: how many distractions was that really worth? How much crucial, instantly actionable email did I receive to make it worth shifting my attention over 2000 times?

How about have email set to check every 6 minutes, and minimize your email client when working on projects that require concentration. If it's really important they can call you or IM you after all.

Email overload

Some practical tips on dealing with email overload. Make action requests clear!

If you want things to get done, say so. Clearly. There’s nothing more frustrating as a reader than getting copied on an e-mail and finding out three weeks later that someone expected you to pick up the project and run with it. Summarize action items at the end of a message so everyone can read them at one glance.

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