Let’s do a quick review….

We talked about the top 3 ways to waste time with your email on Monday and then I decided I needed to get off my chair and move around a little. Alright, let’s continue on from number 4 then.

Here’s the Top 3 Ways to Waste Time With Your Email

4. Open an email message that’s actually important

You decide it’s time to get to work so you open an email that looks semi-important. It seems to be from one of your clients. It’s a pretty long email and you can’t figure out where the punch line is. You read the whole thing, it takes about 5 minutes and when you get to the end, you finally realize what the email is all about. He wants a replacement on something you shipped last week. You’re now mad that he’s wasted 5 minutes of your time to get to the point.  But, you’re a nice person so you send out a reply to him and that only takes you about 3 minutes, you’ve got other important emails to get to. Since you’re in a hurry, you don’t check with the manufacturing department and you just forgot to spell check your email (Oooppss)!

5.  Call your Buddy and complain about the stupid email

You’re still mad that your client has wasted 5 minutes of your time to get to the punch line. You are so mad that you can’t work anymore. You decide a 5 minute phone call with your buddy will make things better for you. You call him and complain about what a “jerk” you have for a client. Your buddy has had a similar experience so he joins in and talks about his “stupid” client and co-workers. Thirty minutes later, you’re both feeling better. You both realize you’ve wasted some time but you decide it was a good (and inexpensive) therapy.

6.  Last minute email reply-athon

You realize the day is almost over (and you haven’t accomplished a thing), so it’s time to look at those emails, but by this time, there’s 30 more than you started out with. You grab more caffeine and are ready to face the emails. You look at the important emails and start hitting reply and send without a second thought (no spell check and no consultations with anyone else). You manage to reply to about half of them but there are still the other half remaining.

You decided you’ve worked hard enough for today and really need a break, go home, pick up the kids, make dinner, watch TV and sleep.

And you call it a day. You  promise tomorrow will be better.

When tomorrow rolls by, start over from Step 1.