{"id":357,"date":"2011-02-23T20:13:33","date_gmt":"2011-02-24T02:13:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/?p=357"},"modified":"2011-02-23T20:02:49","modified_gmt":"2011-02-24T02:02:49","slug":"set-times-for-handling-e-mail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/2011\/02\/set-times-for-handling-e-mail\/","title":{"rendered":"Set Times for Handling E-Mail"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been reading how we should set aside specific times during the day to deal with e-mail.\u00a0 By only dealing with e-mail at those certain times, we\u2019ll reduce distractions and improve our productivity.\u00a0 I\u2019ve noticed how although I\u2019ve turned the e-mail chime off, the number of unopened e-mails get my attention whenever it goes up.\u00a0 It turns out that I\u2019m enticed to check my e-mail, even when I\u2019m in the midst of working on something.\u00a0 I know better, yet it\u2019s hard to resist.<\/p>\n

Then something even more dramatic happened with my e-mail.\u00a0 I checked it one day before heading off to a client\u2019s.\u00a0 I had an e-mail that I very quickly read and thought about it as I drove to my appointment.\u00a0 It was a late night and I went to bed after getting home.\u00a0 Several days later as I was driving to another appointment, I suddenly wondered if I\u2019d responded to that e-mail.\u00a0 It turned out that I hadn\u2019t.\u00a0 Yet, I\u2019d thought about what I\u2019d say and then forgot that I hadn\u2019t gotten those words into an e-mail.<\/p>\n

Truthfully, I’d already been thinking I needed a better way to handle e-mail.\u00a0 Everything I’d been reading was just reinforced by my experience.\u00a0 With all that technology offers us, it also is training us to ignore some basic principles.\u00a0 Technology does provide much faster ways to communicate with others, whether it’s e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter – no need to wait for that letter to be delivered by the Post Office and wait for the person to write back and get it into the mail.\u00a0 I do miss those days some!<\/p>\n

Yet, I see how compulsively I check my e-mail after I see the number go up, and not unlike the mailbox most times, I’m disappointed.\u00a0 While the real crux of the matter is – I distracted myself from what I was working on.\u00a0 Tony Schwartz of The Energy Project<\/a> says that tasks take 25% longer when we switch between them, than if we’d just focused on one at a time.\u00a0 Yikes!<\/p>\n

It seems to me that most professionals already practice limiting when they deal with e-mail, and having embarrassingly forgotten I hadn’t responded, magnifies its importance for my life.\u00a0 Yet as I think about doing this, I realize there’s some reluctance, maybe even dread.\u00a0 E-mail is certainly not as instant as the social media tools, but it’s designed as this quick way to communicate.\u00a0 It almost seems contradictory to set aside chunks of time for dealing with it.\u00a0 Somehow, it seems like it’s not supposed to be time consuming.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, it’s important to take your time in dealing with it.\u00a0 There’s no question that some e-mails need our time and attention.\u00a0 Also, this is how we avoid letting e-mails get out of control.\u00a0 If we set aside time every day to handle our e-mail we not only respond when we need to, we can add things to our schedule, and archive those e-mails that are relevant enough to keep.<\/p>\n

There’s no easy answer for how much time you need to handle your e-mail.\u00a0 If your work is largely via e-mail, you’ll likely need more time than others whose work is less e-mail dependent.\u00a0 From what I’ve read, a minimum of twice a day, so whether that’s 30 minutes in the morning and another 30 minutes in the evening, or more will depend on your situation.<\/p>\n

Most of know that we need to focus on what we\u2019re doing and limit the number of distractions that come our way.\u00a0 Yet the technology encourages us to jump around \u2013 and we\u2019re prone to avoid pain and drawn towards pleasure.\u00a0 We need to remember that although it might feel limiting to schedule specific times for e-mail, in the long run it will be more pleasurable!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An embarrassing thing happened to me, I\u2019d responded to an e-mail in my mind and forgot that I never physically did it. This just reinforced the idea that we need to set aside specific times for handling e-mail as well as by doing this we\u2019ll be less likely to let the mailbox overflow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[10,8,25,22,4],"class_list":["post-357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-timemanagement","tag-behavior","tag-discipline","tag-postaweek2011","tag-productivity","tag-routines"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7p82c-5L","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":361,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions\/361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}