4 of the Most Popular Productivity Tips Busted
#2: Don’t check emails at the start of the day
You have probably seen these productivity tips:
- If a task will only take you two minutes to do, do it immediately.
- Don’t check your emails at the start of the day.
- Snooze non-urgent emails to get them out of your inbox.
- Schedule all your tasks in your calendar.
This is all excellent productivity advice, right? Well, perhaps not, says productivity expert Carl Pullein.
#1: The 2-minute rule
This tip says:
If it’s going to take you two minutes or less, do it now. Then you’ll have fewer incomplete tasks on your “to-do” list.
That makes sense, right?
The problem is, these days we have many little tasks that take two minutes or less. For example, email. Let’s say you’ve got sixty emails, and dealing with each email takes you between one and two minutes. That means it will take you one to two hours to get through them all.
Instead, you can whizz through your emails and clear your inbox quickly. For each email, ask yourself two questions:
- What is it?
- What do I have to do?
You can then quickly deal with each of them in one of the following ways:
- If it requires action, move it to a folder called “Action Today”.
- If it’s information you need to keep, archive it.
- If you don’t need it, delete it.
That way, you can quickly clear your inbox, then make time to action the important ones later.
#2: Don’t check emails at the start of the day
This tip says:
Checking your emails delays you from starting work. So, wait until later in the day before you open your inbox.
That sounds like a good approach if you want to get things done, right?
But there are two problems with this:
- You might miss important information you need to know that day. For example, somebody might need to change an appointment.
- Until you check your emails, you will be wondering whether you’re missing anything. This thought will distract you from your work.
Just because you’re checking your emails, that doesn’t mean you need to reply to or action them all.
Instead, you can blitz through them as I described earlier. Look for any urgent communications, mark other emails for action later, and then get rid of the rest.
Once you’ve done that, you can get on with your work, knowing you haven’t missed anything.
#3: Snoozing emails
Some email apps these days allow you to snooze emails. This makes them disappear from your inbox for several days so you can deal with them later when you have more time.
The problem with this approach is that you will have already seen the email. So just deal with it. If it needs action, put it in a folder for later. You can then block out some time in your calendar for dealing with communications.
But by snoozing it, all you’re doing is delaying making that decision. You can make that decision quickly now, in the same amount of time it takes you to snooze it.
#4: Micro-managing your calendar
Time-blocking is when you block out periods of time on your calendar for particular tasks. If done correctly, this can be an effective way of managing your time to make sure you get important things done.
But don’t block out every minute of the day with every task on your “to-do” list. Things can easily over-run, and then that makes the rest of your day over-run too.
Meetings in particular usually go on longer than planned. A day full of back-to-back meetings that over-run will become a disaster.
Also, things emerge throughout the day that you couldn’t have planned for.
So, a better approach is to have some space in your calendar to allow for flexibility. Only schedule blocks of time for things that you are genuinely going to do. Then the rest of the time can be flexible for dealing with whatever comes up throughout the day.
This article was based on the following video:
Get my latest articles sent straight to your inbox! Sometimes I am hilarious. Other times I am fascinating. But I’m always worth reading. CLICK HERE!