The Modern Addiction - E-mails!
How many of you are addicted to
checking your e-mail?
For a lot of us, in fact, this has become a
compulsion.
Checking your e-mail every three minutes not only distracts
you from other work. It is also disappointing because most of the messages
flooding into our over worked in-boxes are not exactly urgent.
So - if
you want to kick that E-mail Checking Habit, here are a few tips:
- Turn off your e-mail program when you're not using it (you don't check the
voicemail on your phone every few minutes without a meaningful prompt).
- Only read your e-mails when you have time to respond. Most e-mails can be
glanced through and deleted but the important and urgent messages require
thought and attention. They're like important phone calls or letters to write -
they shouldn't be rushed.
- Manage your e-mails. Delete the ones you don't need, create folders for the
regular, important communications. Frustrating is not the word to describe
frantically searching through your in-box for that crucial e-mail. Down this
path lies a lot of grey hair!
- Schedule the e-mails that will take longer to respond to. Use another folder called 'ACTION' (or similar) and keep your inbox clear.
Now, this action plan will work, it will help get you off the E-mail Checking
Habit but it will hurt. Your fingers will quiver with expectation, a part of
your mind will prod and poke, 'Check your e-mails, go on, you know you want
to!
The problem with the e-mail revolution is that we end up living in
them instead of getting on with what we're meant to be doing.
