One of the aspects that I focus on in the E-mail Redux workshop is interruptions, the effect they have on productivity and a couple of techniques on how to handle them.
One of the techniques we look at is shutting down your e-mail client, or at least increasing the interval at which it fetches e-mail. A thought provoking article in the Technology section of the SMH (Sydney Morning Herald) describes a study that was conducted last year which found that
“it takes an average of 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after interruption by email”
And even more damning
“people who check their email every five minutes waste 81/2 hours a week figuring out what they were doing moments before”
The article goes on to discuss a number of other interesting studies, many of which I will refer to in separate posts.
The article concludes with the following tips on keeping control of your inbox:
Turn off intrusive alerts. Anything that pops up, flashes, or goes “ding!” will interrupt you when you’re trying to focus and will trigger a response to check your email.
Set your email client to display just the title and first few lines of the email, so you can easily decide if it is important enough to deal with right now.
Use other tools. Twitter and instant messaging (IM) are better for asking short questions of chosen groups. Wikis are better for collaborating on documents. Blogs are better for publishing information and having informal conversations.
Send fewer emails. Do you need to hit “reply to all”?
Schedule your email. Set aside time each day to deal with your inbox and ignore it for the rest of the day. Most people check first thing in the morning and late afternoon.
These are all great tips. Common sense you could argue, but then again, common sense is not that common, is it?
I found the images when I did a Google image search for interruptions. Read more about the original images here.
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