Are you a reactionary worker?

If emails tend to be a big part of your job, have you ever noticed how many times in a day do you click the send/receive button just to see who has emailed or responded to your previous emails?

You may even want to calculate out this wonderful time waster and take a look at how much time you give away to your emails rather than staying focused on one task at a time. Did you know, fact, that when you are taken off track from a task it takes you an average of 15 minutes to get back on track.

Everyone has moments where distractions can be high. Phone calls, staff interruptions, delivery people coming in and out, and emails to which I suspect is one of the highest distractions on the list!

Set up your clients to know when they can expect to hear from you and give yourself a break! The book “The 4 Hour work week” by Timothy Ferris talks about setting up an auto responder on your email accounts to let people know what time of the day they can expect to hear from you and if it is urgent for them to reach you, instruct them to call you. Chances are it is not urgent most times but you make it urgent by being reactionary.

This is a very simple solution to an age old problem, well at least since technology gave us email!

Keep it simple and get more done in your day! Your clients will love you for it!