This is Why You Should Stop Checking your E-Mails Every Waking Moment
If you check your e-mail just 3 times an hour, you might be loosing up to 2 full working days a month. How did I come up with it?
Just a quick check of e-mail takes at least 5 minutes. You might not actually by staring into your Gmail or Outlook inbox for full 5 minutes, but even a few second interruption will break your thoughts, you will loose your focus, and it takes time to get your full focus back.
Don't believe me? There's research for that. According to a study conducted at the University of California at Irvine, it takes most workers 23 minutes to get back to their tasks after an interruption.
Let's do the math:
1 "quick" e-mail check = 5 minutes
If you do that 3 times per hour for 8 hours = 120 minutes (2 hours)
2 hours x 20 work days = 40 hours
Yes. A quick "Let me just check..." can waste up to 40 hours, 5 work days, a month. A whole week of just checking e-mails! That's insane, right?
Unless you work in customer service, there is no need to live in your e-mail inbox. Email is a method of communication. It's an alternative to phone calls and old school letters and as such, as a method of communication, will not move you further for completion of your work.
You should rather spend time on doing the work requested or ageeed on in the email communication, rather then looking for new one in your e-mail inbox.
Tomorrow, try out these two things:
- First, turn off your e-mail notification. If you don't know how, a quick Google search will help for sure.
- Second, once the notifications will stop bothering you, resist the urge find out what's new. Do not look for new e-mails in your Outlook, Gmail or whichever app you use for your e-mail communication.
- Third, make a decision to go only look for new e-mails 3 times a day: morning, lunch, afternoon, but once you do, make sure you do your best to achieve the so-called Inbox Zero. Reply to everybody, archive what can be archived, and delete what should be deleted.
When you start handling your e-mails in a more conscious way, not only you will save a ton of time, the quality of your communication will be significantly increased.