Space apart your mail collection to get some real work done

I've just adopted a new email technique:  Less pickups. 

After reading Marsha Egan's Inbox Detox, I realized that I'm constantly interrupted by incoming emails. Even though I've turned off the audio notification, I see the little envelope in my tool bar and cannot resist checking it. It's a constant source of interruption, and according to Egan, takes about four minutes out of my productivity each time I stop to check it.  

What she suggested in her book was simple:  Change your settings to space apart email retrieval. The default in Entourage is two minutes. I changed my settings to two hours.  Now, I get real work done and only get interrupted five times over the entire day. If I'm waiting for an email, I can manually check it, so nothing is lost.  

Unless you live in a get-back-to-me in five minutes world, this might be a good productivity booster for you too. 

PS: In Entourage or Outlook, click the Tools menu and then Run Schedules.  Double click on your Send and Receive schedule and you can make changes there!

Comments

[Matt Walker]

thanks for the post tim - i just changed my preferences on my email. i did an experiment this morning by turning off my email (what a novel idea) and as i expected, my productivity jumped. thanks for the simple reminder.