Email Is Wasting Your Life. Try This.

Technology is a bitch and she’s killing your relationships.

You know exactly what I’m talking about it. It’s time you acknowledge that you’re cheating…with your phone.

Listen - with today’s technology people constantly have access to their email. Not only do we all have access but also our phones give us alerts and reminders every time we get a new email in our inbox. This gives us the feeling that we have to check it right at that moment no matter if it’s important or just spam.

It’s leading to the slow death of your relationships.

Admit it – you’ve heard it.

“Are you even listening to me?”

And if we’re willing to be honest with ourselves, most of the time, we aren’t. That’s because we are answering the millionth work email at home.

Not only does it hurt relationships but also personal health. Studies show that checking email up to an hour before bed has the same effect on sleep as drinking two espressos.  Which means looking at your email is wasting time you could be sleeping… and then some.

When it comes to being at work, emails are severely wasting your time and hurting your productivity. Studies show that people spend 28% of their workweek checking emails. This is because employees get an average of 304 weekly business emails.

An AVERAGE. Which means that if you’re like me, you’re one of the people who has to multiply that number by 10. That’s a lot of emails to go through.

Not only do employees spend a lot of time checking useless emails but then they proceed to spend an average of 16 minutes refocusing on their other tasks after reading their messages.

In addition, constantly looking through, reading, and throwing out emails is said by some scientists to decrease your IQ by 10 points.  And let’s be honest- most people can’t afford to lose a single point.

Productivity costs when it comes to your employees checking their emails is the same as throwing your money in the trash. Here are some stats for you.

• On average, annually companies lose $1250 in wages PER EMPLOYEE on them reading spam mail.
• That number increases to $1800 on them reading unnecessary emails.
• It gets even worse. That number climbs to as much as $4100 on reading poorly written communication because clarification is required and more time is wasted.

That’s an average of $7,100 PER EMPLOYEE PER YEAR because of time wasted on email.

So how do we save some time and money?

Here’s how I do it:

• If an email that comes through on my phone isn’t urgent, I ignore it. I respond to the vast majority of my emails once daily. My team hates it – it means they get 500 emails from me around 9pm.
• I have only three inboxes on gmail – promotions, social and primary. 99% of promotions and social get nuked within seconds of me sitting in front of a computer to respond to emails. Stay on top of the sorting and your life will get much easier.
• Set aside “no phone time”. I’m still failing at this – but my wife will get me in line yet.
• Keep the phone 10 feet away from you while you’re sleeping. It will not only stop you from sleep-emailing, but it will force you to get your butt out of bed when the alarm on your phone goes off.

What about you? Any tricks you want to share to help readers save their relationships and their sanity?

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POSTED BY

Kyle Reyes is the President and Creative Director of The Silent Partner Marketing, New England's #1 Marketing Agency. We're a boutique marketing firm focused on helping businesses grow in an age of exploding technology. You can find him on Google+, Facebook and Twitter.