Email: The Productivity Killer

Was I asleep? Did I miss something? I was under the impression that email was something you sent when you wanted to communicate something that was good to know, or needed an answer, but didn't need your direct attention or immediate response this second. If it was something really important, you flagged it as urgent.

But suddenly, every email we send has become a ticking time bomb that has to be answered right now, this very second.

God help you if you don't.

We've got people who send emails, and wait anxiously, huddled over their keyboards, waiting for their response. If they don't get one within a few minutes, they pick up the phone or open an IM window and ask, "Did you get my email? Did you read it?" If you dare answer in the affirmative, they ask you why you didn't respond. If it was that urgent, why didn't you just call? 

We've become a society that hinges on instant communication, leaving instant message services open, cell phones on 24/7, and email applications open and minimized so we know the very second we get an email.

But here's the skinny of it: the vast majority of the email we receive is unimportant garbage. And yet, Microsoft Outlook feels utterly compelled to give me a nice little notification every time I get an email from someone who wants to tell me there's leftover cake in the coffee area, that I can get a lower rate on my mortgage, or that some obscure fellow from offshore wants me to engage in a money-laundering scheme with him.

That kind of distraction is a major productivity killer. It's every bit as bad as an instant message window popping up from your mom, telling you that the cat puked on the kitchen floor.

Why? Because it breaks your concentration, and usually at really critical moments when you've got your groove on.

Face it: You don't really need to know those things. Microsoft Outlook shouldn't alert you to every email that you should receive. It should alert you to those marked urgent or flagged with a read-receipt, and then, only those from people on your approved senders list (usually, your contact list or the Exchange server). But no, that might actually make sense.

I came into work today and decided to conduct an experiment. I'm normally distracted by a ton of little things that I am certain are the primary killers of my productivity. They usually boil down to three things: email, instant messenger, and the compulsive urge to browse the Web. So I set out to eliminate those things. I shut down my instant messaging applications. I checked my mail once, and then exited the application. I didn't minimize it, I closed it.

Then, instead of leaving the defect tracking software open in a browser all day, where I'm tempted to keep checking my feeds and peruse Digg, I exported the list of defects to Excel, and then closed the browser. I then kept the browser closed all morning.

I've gotten more work done this morning than I have in the past two days. Why? Because I can concentrate. My train of thought isn't constantly being derailed by instant messages, email notifications, and that highly tempting little bookmark that mocks me on my Firefox Live Bookmarks toolbar.

These kinds of things are serious productivity killers. They simply pull me away from what I should be doing. So you can bet that I'll be seriously mitigating their impact on my work life in the future. It's a sad fact that in our world, we can't escape them because they've become so entrenched in the way that we work and live.

But, I'll set aside specific times to check my mail each day (first thing in the morning, lunch time, and right before I go home). Instant Messaging software is out. And I'll significantly reduce my use of the browser, constraining myself to those uses for which it was intended.

Maybe, if I do those things, and am able to get my work done at the office, I won't have to take my work home. You know, where there's a completely different set of distractions.