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Recently I wrote about my commitment to overcoming email addiction in order to be more productive and free up mental capacity for more important things. I wanted to give an update on how things are going.

My goal was to check only twice a day on weekdays and never first thing in the morning. Since writing that post I’ve not once checked my email first thing in the morning. This in of itself has been a great improvement. It was such a compulsive habit, but it really wasn’t a great start to the day. I find I get so much more momentum when I work on a solid business development task for the first hour or two of the day.

Checking only twice a day has worked out well. For the most part I’ve stuck to it. Early on I slipped up a couple times. One other exception is that I check when I am expecting an email from a client/customer or in an active email exchange with them to get an important task done. But the key here is to NOT get sucked into other email coming in if it is not one of your two two times of the day to look at and act on email. I just look for the customer email and read nothing else.
I’ve also been unsubscribing from any email newsletters that don’t have anything to do with what I am working on right now. If you can’t read it and act on it….ditch it. Too many newsletters becomes a distraction. Filing it as “To Read” is no good either. Let’s be honest. It’ll never get read. At most, I suggest you delete/archive it and know that you can use something like Google search later to find it if you need.

This leaves only a few email newsletters in my inbox:

• A couple email newsletter from colleagues and competitors so I can keep tabs on what they are doing
• Alice Seba’s Outsourcing Newsletter
• Krishna De’s Biz Growth Newsletter (she also talks about outsourcing and productivity on occasion)

Can you tell what is on my mind most lately? I also handle RSS reading differently now, too. I’ll talk about that more in another post.

The effects on my mental capacity and productivity have been significant. At the end of the day, I feel better about what I got done. I focus better throughout the day. I get more momentum from the starting line by not checking email first. I typically check for the first time right after noon. I avoid nagging interruptions right before I go to bed by not reading email last thing at the end of the day. I don’t check email after 5PM-ish (6PM at the latest).

If this resonates with you, then I highly recommend reading Cutting the Email Leash Part 1 for the set of goals I set to get started. Here are a few more suggestions:

• Take a serious look at where you get the most email and start cutting liberally (unsubscribe, tell people to handle problems themselves rather than come to you for everything, etc.) For each email, quickly ask yourself: “Do I really need to get this or can I cut this email source out?”
• If you think you can’t do twice a day because you get too much email, then you need to cut down on how much email you get. You wouldn’t let someone reach into your pocket and take your cash, don’t let them reach into your inbox and take your time.
• Apply filters to automatically delete or file emails that you need for later reference (by search) but don’t need to see when you get it
• Install a good search program like Google Desktop search (or use GMail) so you can just delete liberally and know you can always search for something later
• Realize you don’t have to reply to everything (this one is really hard for me and I am still working on it)
• If something can be responded to in under two minutes, just do it and be done. If not, determine the next action that needs to be taken and stick it on a list.

Anyone else working on this? Let me know how it’s going. I can always use more tips.

This post is in: 4-Hour Workweek, Productivity