Be More Productive By Checking Email LESS

I've said it before: limiting how often you check your email each day will make you more productive. The pressure to answer each email as it comes in, "staying on top of things", obsessively checking your email all day long can drag you down. You become so consumed by getting your replies out on time and "communicating" that you get sidetracked from the project you are supposed to be working on.

It's easy to let your work load pile up while you fall under the stress of handling your email. That can be the death of your productivity, and it can take a big toll on your profits. You know how easy it is to get sidetracked, too. You open your email program each morning, letting it run in the background "in case you miss something." You get a notification of new mail, and you drop what you are doing to go read it.

While you are reading the new mail, you notice all the junk mail you have to delete. You start deleting your spam, and you see the funny jokes someone sent you. The jokes were so good, you immediately write a new email to friends and colleagues to forward it. Meanwhile, you still haven't answered the business email you originally came to check, and a one minute task has snowballed into ten or fifteen minutes. What's worse is that this happens several times a day to most people.

Time management is something people talk about as a way to save money all the time. Time management applies to everything you do, even checking email. Imagine how much less time you'd waste if you took a few simple steps to help manage how you use your email.

First, take a look at your spam filters on your email application. They should be set to medium high, and you should be adding specific domains, email addresses and subject line spam words as you find them. Your software manual has instructions on how to do this. You won't completely eliminate spam any more that you can ads off your television and out of magazines and billboards, but you will cut it down quite a bit.

After that, schedule two times a day to check your email, three if you run a time sensitive business. They should hit morning, mid day and at the end of the day. This will keep you focused on your projects during the majority of the day and save you time and money.

Once you have chosen your two or three times each day to check, start letting your clients know your new email policy. You don't have to spend a lot of time on this - you can add a signature line to each new email, or you can drop a group email to your client list explaining that now you have a four to six hour response window during the day and emails received after business hours will be handled the next morning.

Last, you need to cut back on frivolous emailing. Those jokes and chain emails people send are funny, and your newsletters are informative, but they waste your time and ultimately cost you money. Cutting them down to a manageable level or developing a system for reading them that takes less time is going to do wonders for your stress levels and your productivity.

The less time you spend procrastinating and obsessing over email, the more time you spend getting down to business. Getting down to business is what will make you a success, so control those emails and take back control of your time. It's worth it.