Multitasking is hard, and harder without structure.
When you're trying to get several things done in one day, interruptions are death. A while ago, I changed my external email preferences so I was only informed once per hour of any new emails, as opposed to being notified they minute they came in.
Then, about three or so months ago I turned that off entirely, so that I would only know if I had new external email by actually logging into my client and checking.
I think the time has finally come that I need to do the same thing with internal work email. For whatever reason (because I am working on so many disparate projects I suppose), I'm getting something like 2 or 3 emails per hour asking me to perform some task or answer some questions about this art order, that spelling, or say what book trumps which for FR reference, and so on.
For the 2nd half of today, I just ignored all those work emails. Wonder of wonder, I actually got some words written on my current projects!
From now on, work email is for morning. After that, no more reading it until the next day. Or if I read it, I'll try not to feel beholden to act on it immediately.
I can't do anything about people showing up out of the blue behind me with a vexing question or three, but email, you're history!
At least until the current load of tasks diminishes somewhat, because I do wonder... has someone sent me an email recently? Excuse me while I go check...
4 comments:
Bruce
Have a good Day!!!!
e-mail, the new hell of the corporates. (And yeah, they pile up even if you're working for a small company).
Bruce,
I have been reading on this subject quite a bit recently. Was wondering what gave you the idea or incentive to ban email. I have been trying to stop checking it so often, but without much success...I am always wondering what interesting tidbit is waiting in the inbox.
Doug
Doug,
Random emails are random interruptions in work flow, and every interruption takes not only whatever time requires to deal with it alone, but also the time to get back into the flow of whatever you were writing. So it's doubly bad, and stressful to be constantly interrupted. And email is good at being disruptive.
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