DON’T LET EMAILS REPLACE REAL WORK
My second productivity confession is that I respond to email too quickly. I realise that risks being a humblebrag, along the lines of “my biggest weakness is that I work too hard”. But it’s not difficult to be responsive to email: All that is required is a simple filing system and a willingness to make decisions.
Indeed, that’s the problem. Email is so easy to deal with that it’s tempting to let email replace hard work.
Faced with a genuinely difficult task, it’s the path of least resistance to open up my inbox instead. It doesn’t feel like I’m ducking the real work – what could be more professional than dealing promptly with email?
But ducking the real work is exactly what I’m doing. For me, the most dangerous distraction is not YouTube or Instagram: It’s the things such as email, which are nearly, but not quite, the work that needs to be done.
My rapid emails are a symptom of a deeper productivity malaise: A habit of switching on my computer without having my To Do list at hand. Lacking a clear plan for what I was going to do, habit takes over, and I am deep in the email inbox, letting other people’s priorities override my own.
On a good day, there’s plenty of email, so at least I’m getting something done. On a bad day, I clear the inbox quickly and am then in danger of losing my grip and browsing the internet looking for something to do.
The solution is childishly simple. I should ensure that whenever I switch on my computer I have in front of me a good list of what I need to do. It is a huge step towards forging ahead and doing it. The fact that I do not always follow this childishly simple advice may make it seem more childish still.
I suppose I could always get my computer to remind me. In 2018, Alex Williams, Harmanpreet Kaur, Gloria Mark and others presented research about using chatbots to stay on task. Their bot pops up to prompt people to reflect on their goals for the day – either what they wanted to do, or how they wanted to feel. Both kinds of prompts were effective at getting people to focus on the real work – for an hour or so. And then? Then the effect starts to fade. Gloria Mark has suggested writing the goal on a sticky note so the memory lasts a little longer.
It seems absurd that I and many others neglect so basic a thing as to remind ourselves what we wanted to do when we sat down at the computer. But with distraction only a click away, get those sticky notes out.
