The sixth way that time gets wasted is through email or through text messaging. Just because you receive an email, does not mean you have to instantly open it.
I know a man who cannot ignore an email when it comes in—it’s almost like a compulsion to read and answer it immediately. He has it set to pop up on his computer. And no matter what he’s doing he has to open the email and read it.
Again, it wastes your time. Why? Time management experts have proven (and this is true for everyone—no exceptions—including you) that when you’re focused on a task, and you stop doing that to go to something else, when you come back to what you were originally doing, it takes your brain a moment to restart and get re-focused and going on what you were originally doing. You waste seconds, sometimes perhaps even minutes, just getting going again from stopping and reading an email or text.
Just because an email comes in does not mean you have to read it. I know it’s a compulsive behavior for some of you but you do not have to do it. Set aside a time to respond to general email, once or twice a day. Again just like your phone calls, batch your emails. Late in the morning, mid-afternoon or later afternoon, batch them. When you make your calls then go ahead and batch the emails and take care of them too.
Text messaging is sometimes more insidious because that phone is sitting in your pocket buzzing at you or ringing and you want to immediately pick it up. Ignore it! Let it go! Pick it up later and respond. It’s probably not a life-threatening emergency. Leave it alone. It wastes your time.
You can also have people screen your emails for you if you have staff. Have them look at them. If it is not important for you to personally deal with it, let someone else. Having a good Spam or Firewall set up will also keep a lot of the garbage out of your in-box. Let it go to junk mail and sometimes just scan the junk mail and then delete it all.
Make certain also that you are not wasting other peoples’ time with your emails or text messages. Do not ramble. Be succinct, let people know what’s going on, be to the point and be clear. Email and text messaging can waste your time hugely.
The most effective people spend a minimal amount of time on email a day. Why? Because you could probably spend hours a day reading emails, answering emails, looking at them. But unless that’s your job leave it alone. It is a time waster.