“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.” – Zig Ziglar
Let me set the scene for you…
You’re sitting at your computer, and you’re focused and working hard. Perhaps it’s a proposal you’re working on, a blog you’re writing, or a project that truly needs your undivided attention. And then it happens. You hear the sound… bing! This is quickly followed by a subject line you see, and the first five or six words from an email tempting you to stop what you are doing and take a “quick” look. If that doesn’t grab you, a red number appears on your mailbox icon taunting you with its lie; “This will only take a second.”
As we all know, it never takes only a second. In fact, a Microsoft study suggests it takes a worker 15 minutes to refocus after an interruption. The study also suggests the harder the interrupted task, the harder it is to get back on track.
“It takes a worker 15 minutes to refocus after an interruption.”
This would not be as disturbing if we only received a half dozen emails a day, but those days are long gone. The Radicati Group, Inc. recently released a study that estimates each of us sends and receives an average of 120 emails a day. I know many who get three times that many in a day! Now imagine the umpteen times we start and stop the project we are trying to finish and you can clearly see why we can’t seem to get anything done! I think there’s a way out of this mess, but it isn’t going to be easy.
- Put it in writing. When group emails are sent, beg every friend and colleague you know to ask everyone on the list NOT to “reply all.” Put it in the subject line if you have to! I’ve already whined about this pet peeve of mine before, (https://jolles.com/blarticle/dont-hit-that-button/).
- Take the power away. If your friends or colleagues just can’t figure out the difference between “reply” and “reply all,” remove their ability to decide. Outlook, Apple Mail, Google Groups, and more offer ways to create mailing lists that will keep this from happening, but if all else fails, just copy and paste your mailing list into the Bcc: area and make yourself the recipient.
- Get rid of that SPAM. Either unsubscribe or designate it as Junk. If you do, you’ll be getting rid of about 20% of the email distractions you are currently receiving.
- Try the 30/30 Method. The idea here is to work for a minimum of 30 minutes without checking email, and then spending no more than 30 minutes working on the emails that have been received. To make this work on a Mac, I went to System Preferences – Notifications – Mail. From there I unchecked, “Play Sound for Notifications” so I would not hear emails coming in, and “Show message preview” so I would not see emails coming in. (Outlook and other mail programs have similar options.)
It’s not going to be easy to rid ourselves of these distractions, but please remember this: I haven’t even touched upon the 2.1 hours of productivity that are lost every day due to instant messages and the various alerts coming from our smartphones. For now, let’s just focus on the scourge of productivity; emails. It’s time for us to reclaim the time that we’ve lost due to all of these unwanted, unnecessary, interruptions. We can do this!
Amen Rob!
Thanks Ben. Now, if we can get folks to stop hitting that reply all, and get ourselves to stop running at every “bing” we hear, we’ll really get on the other side of this thing!
Great BLart Rob, I often find myself the victim of the “refocus.” Distractions are a huge obstacle in the way of getting my daily to-do list taken care of and e-mail “blings” are a major part of my derailing. I will work without email open and find the best way for me to stay focused is to force myself to stay OFF of email until I am ready to tackle that task. Thanks for the info as always. Glad to see it’s not just me.
Try that 30/30 challenge and see if that helps. It’s not easy, and you won’t stand a chance unless you cut the sound and notification banner on those emails. Now, if someone is calling, I’ll always stop what I’m doing! We speakers have to be ready at a moment’s notice when bureaus and clients are checking dates. Thanks for posting Doug.
Rob:
I was prompted to got to my settings and change my IMAP/POP accounts to retrieve messages only every two hours rather than 15 minutes even before I finished your BLartical. See how easily I am distracted. I react to many stimuli, including good ideas. I’ll use all three methods.
Thanks,
Tom Z
That one made me laugh, and it also reminded me of a simple change we can all make. I had not even thought of changing my settings to retrieve mail every 30 minutes. That’s another reason why I so appreciate people like you who take the time to post. Thanks Tom!
Couldn’t agree with you more – on this one, Rob! Believe it or not – I didn’t ‘discover’ email – until I was I was almost 70! But – once
I did…..look out….all h— broke loose!
…now can’t live without it! …but not with all the ‘abuses’ that have come along with it! As great a ‘productive’ tool as it has been for me….as you indicated…it’s been a ‘destructive’ tool, as well! Seems like there’re a lot of ‘folks’ out there, who love to ‘disrupt’ my daily, peaceful email ‘routine’ – and cause a lot of aggravation and ‘heartburn’!
Thanks for those few good ‘tips’ on how to ‘combat’ this menace, Rob!
JM
“C.T.”
It is interesting how this scourge of productivity represents a technology we can’t live with it, and we can’t live without it. Common courtesy, and an adjusted setting or two sure helps. As always, great hearing from you John!
Been working the 30-30 idea to great success. Have found it easier to focus and stay on task. Thanks much for the Blarticle on this topic!
Karen
Well thank you! Understand BLArticle® Nation that this piece was inspired by Karen during a meeting we had. I have been working on that 30/30 approach, but because of Tom Z’s suggestion, I just changed my settings to post new mail every 30 minutes. That ought to do it. Thanks for the inspiration Karen!
Rob, great post!
I’ll add two suggestions – 1) Turn off the notification when new mail arrives; after all, who’s driving whom?
2) Move to Gmail and setup the default inbox, which includes tabs and filters so that your primary email tab contains email addressed specifically to you from a human. There are separate tabs for “Social” which grabs everything from LI, Twitter, FB and others; then “Promotions” (broadcast emails sent by vendors – and only those vendors you want to hear from); and “Updates” (automated updates or responses from blog posts, or any system generated messages.) Of course, on top of it all is one of the best spam filters in the business.
On my phone, I set notifications only when the primary tab gets new email.
– Dave S.
Outstanding Dave! I appreciate your expertise in this matter. More great tips on how to control this beast. Thank you so much for taking the time to educate our readers. Really glad you posted this. Great hearing from you Dave!
This is my whole difficulty with “multi-tasking.” It can be a huge liability to think that you can do “many things at once.” Without the proper ability to “serial” task you can work like crazy, and produce absolutely nothing. This goes true for people who leave on their electronic devices in meetings. They may think they are using their time efficiently, but they are missing the one thing they can’t get back when they check their mail–the moment when the critical idea in a presentation or meeting would have connected perfectly to make the salient point you spent two days waiting to “get.” Remember the person in front of you already knows what you need to know to make a meeting resonate for you.
If Rob or one of the readers has a graph of productivity over the business day, I would love to see it. I imagine it is flat at zero for the first one or two hours of the day, then some deliverables are, well, delivered, and that as the day wears on the rate of delivery falls off. I wonder if such a graph would show a sweet spot in terms of daily productivity something closer to the canonical 8 hour work day, rather then the arrive early, stay late, always remain networked and ready to respond culture that it part of many organizations particularly in the US. I like Jason Fried’s summary in his TEDx talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XD2kNopsUs
Well, you just put the word out so let’s see what might pop up. In the meantime keep remembering that one piece of information that haunts me. Each time you stop what you are doing to look at an email, text, or take a phone call, it takes fifteen minutes to get back to where we were mentally. I say we fix this one step at a time, and I switching my email notification from instant, to once every 30 minutes. Thanks for posting Mark.