In Practice February 21, 2007

Are YOU an E-Mail E-ddict?

It used to be that a messy desk was considered to be the sign of a cluttered and inefficient mind (at least by so-called efficiency experts).
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However, those concerns have apparently “evolved’ along with technology advances, and the latest external sign of some internal character flaw is supposedly the state of your e-mail in-basket.
As if it weren’t bad enough to have to suffer the slings and arrows of a technology department driven to distraction with the amount of server space consumed by our congested in-baskets; to be pursued with relentless fervor by compliance departments concerned by the ticking time bombs potentially contained therein; if Human Resources didn’t have enough to fret about (and let’s face it, if you don’t have any of those, you’re on your own—and that means you’re exposed to the calamity of a computer crash)—experts are now available to help!
On average, workers who receive an e-mail take four minutes to read it and recover from the interruption before they can resume working productively, according to Reuters, citing executive coach Marsha Egan.
 
 
Do You Have a Problem?
 
 
The first step is admitting you have a problem, of course—and to that end, Egan’s Web site has a list that can help you self-diagnose if you are, in fact, an e-mail addict.
  • If you don’t receive e-mail for several minutes, you e-mail yourself, just to make sure the e-mail system hasn’t gone down…
  • You look up EVERY time your computer “BRRRINGS” to announce an e-mail…
  • You get upset if you don’t receive a response to your e-mail message in an hour…
  • You stop what you are doing to answer an “easy” e-mail, even though it might not be the most important…
  • You check your e-mail the minute you get out of bed…
  • You ask new acquaintances for their e-mail addresses, not their phone numbers…
  • You open your e-mail first, before doing anything else…
  • You hit “send/receive” as a habit…
  • You keep more than 100 items in your inbox at all times…
  • You click “send/receive” just to make sure you haven’t “missed” any e-mail…
  • You check your spam filters hourly (or less) to make sure you’re not missing anything…
  • You e-mail the person sitting in the desk next to you, rather than turn around to ask the question…
Assuming you do have a problem, Egan offers an approach to help you stay on top of your e-mail. In that Reuters interview, she counsels:
  • Check your e-mail on a regular schedule, not constantly (Egan recommends no more than three or four times/day).
  • Commit to leaving your inbox empty every time you check it.
  • Empty your inbox by applying the “two-minute rule’—handling each e-mail in two minutes or less, or – failing that,
  • Create specific action folders for temporarily filing e-mails that can’t be handled within two minutes.
  • Switch your “send/receive” e-mail function from “automatic’ to “every two hours.’
Oh—and those e-mails now neatly tucked away in those “action’ folders? Well, Egan recommends that you work those into your workday—just like they were projects on a to-do list.
 
Familiar Chord
Sound familiar? At its heart, the advice is not dissimilar from counsel offered over the years on things like avoiding phone call interruptions, or keeping a clean desk by handling papers only once. And like that advice, it offers a certain clarity and structure to what can be an overwhelming flow of requests for action and attention.
However, unlike those phone calls, the delivery of mail, or even the co-worker darkening one’s door, e-mail tends to follow us relentlessly wherever we go, 24 hours/day. Moreover, whereas once upon a time “absolutely, positively overnight”was a model of customer service excellence—with the growing army of e-mail “addicts”clicking away on their “crackberries”in meetings, while driving, and goodness only knows where else—who knows where it will all end?
The first step, of course, is admitting the problem. So, repeat after me—I’m (your name), and I’m an e-mailaholic….
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Have some thoughts on e-mail addiction? Simplistic efficiency experts? Neat freaks? Slovenly desks? Life in general? E-mail me at nevin.adams@plansponsor.com

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