Is Email a Productivity Tool?
Are you familiar with Pavlov’s dog experiment?
In the 1890s, Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, discovered he could trigger the salivation of a dog. In his experiment, he rang a bell and then provided food. Before long the dogs were salivating at the bell even when no food was provided. This is known as classical conditioning.
What is your conditioned response to email?
Do you hear the email ding, see an overcrowded inbox, or start your day with the countless email responses you know you need to tend to?
For most people, email has become a distraction and source of stress at work.
One of the reasons for this, is that we are required to continually filter the vital few from among the trivial many. And as the day goes on our willpower to fight off distractions decreases.
For example:
In the morning you do an excellent job at responding to relevant emails, and the emails about Facebook, Fantasy Football, and the sale at your favorite store go unopened.
But once the afternoon comes, your willpower is fatigued and you cannot resist those other emails.
Despite knowing that you have work to do, you get lost in email for 15-20 minutes, perhaps even longer, and worse still, you find this cycle repeating itself.
Part of willpower is resisting distractions and staying focused on the task at hand. Willpower is a muscle not a virtue, and it requires practice.
As if our dwindling willpower isn’t bad enough, we compound the problem with our need to "look good" by responding to emails right away.
Think of it this way, what would happen if you went to the grocery store every time you thought of something? How would this impact other areas of your life?
Most people have a list when they go to the store, when you don't have an agenda, you end up buying things we don't need.
(Guilty. My wife: "Eric, why did you come home with that?")
A list allows us to stay focused when faced with the distractions of samples and buy-one-get-one-free specials.
This is a technique we can transfer to our inboxes by batching — responding to several emails at a time for a fixed period, say 20 minutes — and then not checking email for the next two to three hours.
Think of it as going to the Inbox store three to five times a day.
The alternative is to work out of your inbox and leave the day feeling like you moved 100 things an inch rather than three things a mile.
As a time management speaker, here are two suggestions for your email.
1. Look at limiting your email time. This requires discipline and at first may feel unnatural because you are used to checking your email frequently. But over time this will allow you to maintain higher levels of concentration which means more significant impact at work.
2. Look at collaboration apps like Slack to replace the conversations that are happening via email. This will keep the team focused on having organized conversations without the distraction of "I need to respond to..."
Email will continue to be a part of our work and personal lives, but by implementing some small changes you can begin to see email as a tool to assist you in productivity rather than a master you are a slave to.