e-mail- Photo courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com/skodonnell
I’ll admit, during the school year e-mail began to control my day. At one point, I could not work anywhere near a computer without hearing the “ding” of an incoming message. The notification would pop up in the corner of my screen and my attention would inevitably be turned to the email instead of the project I was working on or the person I was talking to. I knew I had to get a hold of e-mail before it dictated any more of my life. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by e-mail, here are a few pointers:
1. Realize that the world will keep turning if you don’t answer that e-mail right away. This sounds silly, but I’ve tried it and its true. Life carries on without you dropping everything to answer that e-mail. Truth be told, most people who have an urgent need will pick up a phone and call rather than send a simple e-mail.
2. Turn off notifications and email programs. You don’t need them on all day. You won’t believe the amount of work you can get done when you have these turned off. Work begins to flow and build momentum because you’re not stopping every few minutes to open, read, and respond to an e-mail. You accomplish more and are even able to be completely present when talking with someone when these distractions are eliminated.
3. Check email on a scheduled basis. Some of you may think turning e-mail off during the day would be highly unpractical. The key would be to check your e-mail at regular intervals. I check mine in the morning when my work day begins and at lunch. It helps if you let your co-workers know ahead of time that you will only check your email a couple times a day. Many people are used to immediate feedback, and it may seem inconvenient to them at first, but they will soon realize that some of their emails simply don’t need to be sent.
I found that by using a system like this, a few things happened. First, the number of overall e-mails diminished. People realized that if I wasn’t going to be hovering over my computer ready to pounce on their email and fire off a response in a few minutes, they could just wait and talk to me about it during hall duty, lunch duty, prep period, or after school.
Secondly, I found that many of the situations worked themselves out. What seemed urgent to most people at the time, really wasn’t urgent at all. There have been many times that I walked down the hall to talk to a teacher after seeing their email and they told me that it had been solved already.
So how do you control your e-mail flow? Do you see any problems with this method?
