On the surface, you’d expect email to be one of the biggest productivity-boosters to ever be invented. After all, email can easily replace most faxing, rambling phone calls where much of the information is quickly forgotten after the call, and the dreadfully slow postal mail.
I’ll concede the point: Used the right way, email can boost your productivity. But here’s the thing – most people don’t use email the right away. In fact, many people choose email as their main communication method, even when another method would be more suitable to the situation. And that wastes time and money.
The next time you’re tempted to fire off an email, ask yourself these questions:
* Will I fritter away hours sending emails back and forth? If you need to confirm something with a colleague or perhaps ask a simple yes or no question (that doesn’t require an immediate answer), then email may be a good choice.
On the flip side, if you’re attempting to have a “conversation” by email, then you’ll likely waste entirely too much time typing emails back and forth. If you can pick up the phone and be done with the conversation in a minute or two, choose to call instead of email.
* Can I close my email client/window after I send this email? Do you need a reply to your email right away? And what will happen if the recipient isn’t sitting at his computer… does that mean you’ll spend the next two hours checking your email every few minutes?
If so, you’re wasting time.
If you’re constantly stopping the task you’re working on to check email, then you’ll lose a few precious minutes every time, since when you get back to work you need to refocus. It’s a productivity killer – and often, we’re not as good at multi-tasking as we’d like to believe.
If you need an immediate answer, pick up the phone. If email is the preferred method of communication, then hire an assistant to download and sort your email… and he or she can alert you when an important email comes in.
Whether email is a productivity booster or time-waster for you depends on how you use it. If you have the discipline to check it at set times during the day and then close your email client, it can very likely be a good tool for you to use. But if you have a compulsive need to check your email incessantly all through the day, it may be time for you to reconsider how you use this tool.
