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Is
Your “Email Noodling” Adding Hours to Your Day? (733 words)
by
Marsha Egan
Email
Noodling?!!! Watzzat? Chances are, you know exactly what it is,
although you may not recognize the name… We call it E-Noodling,
for short.
Email
Noodling is the pervasive and time wasting practice of looking
at all the subjects in your inbox, scrolling up and down,
opening one every here and there, closing them without working
on them, marking them
unread” to make sure you read them again, scrolling up and down
some more, lamenting about all the work you have to do, then
getting up and going for a cup of coffee.
We’ve
all done it. Most of us still do it. It is a habit that has
evolved with the growing use of email.
It costs
organizations and you a ton… in lost or misused productivity,
and perhaps even stress.
Prior to
the advent of email, our work and projects were delivered to us
by mail or by voice. We received US Postal mail once a day, and
company delivered mail only a few times daily. And it wasn’t
that much. Our bosses and colleagues may have also delivered to
do’s for the task list by phone, personally or in meetings.
Most of us remember the day when we actually planned our work,
and felt good about the numerous things we accomplished each
day.
Enter
email. In addition to all of the sources listed above, the free
convenient email delivery system has just added a minimum of
30-50 more tasks to the average worker each day. Even though
there may be some spam in there, it is still a task.
The
clincher is, because there is so much email, and the inbox is
right there staring you in the face, most people leave a
majority of the delivered messages in their inbox. So even if
you clear out 20 of those 30 emails daily, over ten days, you
can have 100 items hanging in that inbox. Yikes.
Then
what do you do with all those items?!! You “e-noodle.”
You
search and sort, answer a few, file a few, delete a few. You
re-sort, hoping you’ll be able to delete 10 at once. You look at
all those items, get exasperated, and get up and take a walk!
The
challenge with e-noodling is that most people confuse activity
with results. They are drawn to knocking off items, rather than
working on the most important priority. Give me just 10
minutes, and I’ll clear out 30 pieces of mail. Soon that 10
minutes grows, and you get entangled in the task related to one
of the items, while you were just trying to clear it out, and
oops, you’ve just started working on a not so important item.
Confusing activity with results.
Occasional e-noodling is ok. We all do it. Sometimes we need
those mindless times of the day to stare into space or e-noodle.
The
biggest challenge about e-noodling is that people are engraining
e-noodling as a habit. It has become the way they handle their
email, and has become a big part of how they manage (or should
we say mis-manage?) their time and their work.
It is
reactive, and, done habitually, it can become extremely
unproductive and stressful. The cost is not only in the time
spent e-noodling, but in the resultant time spent working on the
items that are no where near the top of your priority list, and
ultimately the stress related to not getting the “right” stuff
done.
The
cure? Empty out that inbox. Move those emails to another
holding place that allows YOU to decide the priority rather than
getting romanced into working on the wrong stuff. Avoid skimming
subject lines in hopes of clearing out a few items. Work your
email from the top down, consistently. Stop surfing. Focus.
And to
get there, you’ll need to e-noodle one more LONG time. E-noodle
until every item -- every item--is out of the inbox.
Then keep that inbox clean. And start managing and enjoying your
e-noodle-less life again.
While it sounds simple, changing your habits to make sure you do
this every time you review your mail can be a challenge. This
and several other strategies you can take to get your email
under control can be found in our eBook: Help! I’ve Fallen into
my Inbox and Can’t Climb Out! You can find it at
http://EganEmailSolutions.com/catalogue.html
Marsha Egan, CPCU, PCC, is CEO of the Egan
Group, Inc., Reading PA. An ICF Certified Professional Coach,
she is a leading authority on email productivity. She works
with companies who want to recover lost time and money due to
wasteful email practices. Her recently released ebooks, Help!
I've Fallen into My Inbox and Can't Climb Out! Five Email Self
management Strategies that Will Add Hours to Your Week and
Reclaim Your Workplace Email Productivity: Add BIG BUCKS to
Your Bottom Linecan be found at
http://EganEmailSolutions.com. |
