Productivity Tip #1: Get Off Email

You don’t need to have your email open all day. That’s pretty obvious when it comes to personal email but the same holds true for your professional email. I have the bad habit of keeping my various work emails open on my computer and I check them all the time while I’m working on other stuff. I’ m going to change that.

Nobody expects an immediate response to their emails so there’s really no need to have it open all day long. Any email can wait a few hours. For urgent stuff, you should have specific support and sales channels that’s separated from your main email.

In fact having your email open all day is the best way to lose track of your important emails. Most people have their emails open all the time and read their emails as they land in their inbox – but only respond later. They star some of their emails, mark others as unread, etc… Then they go back to these emails later on and reply. So in fact every email is read at least twice. Not to mention the waste of time that comes from constantly interrupting your work flow and mental concentration to check your email window. Trust me, for most people that adds up to many hours every day – you may be spending little time actually reading your emails but the constant interruptions and the “open window” in your mind kill your productivity.

If you need to cooperate live with someone, use chat or any other live service, and close it when you’re done.

I receive tons of emails everyday. Tons. And I don’t mean spam emails and weird  “partnership proposals” that everybody gets. I mean real emails from real people. Still I decided that from now on I’ll have 2 or 3 email sessions every day and close the window and go back to work when I’m done.

Now of course the same principle applies to Twitter, Facebook, RSS reader, etc. So really the title for this productivity tip should be “get off email, twitter, facebook, rss readers, etc!”

Try it out today and let me know how it goes!

If you enjoyed this productivity tip, you’ll enjoy reading these posts as well:

• 6 mistakes passionate entrepreneurs make – read #5!
• Quote: interruptions kill productivity
• Simple tip to make your life at work more enjoyable