The Magical Button

My version of Outlook has a magical button that nearly doubles my productivity. I know this from first-hand experience. And yet, I’m often reluctant to use it. Let me explain: when I’m working on my computer, the “mail” icon is irresistible. When it pops up in the tray at the bottom of my screen, I usually stop what I’m doing so that I can see who has contacted me. After all, it might be something urgent that requires an immediate response, or might be good news that I would want to hear right away. In truth, it’s usually neither. I recently heard of a study that found that this kind of simple interruption from an email can cause a person to lose 20 minutes of productivity. I don’t know if the number is right, but I definitely lose time not only to check the email, but then to recover my train of thought for whatever I was doing previously. For me, the solution is the button that says “Work Offline.” When it is turned on, my computer doesn’t receive email. And when I don’t receive email, I’m able to write blogs and reports without being interrupted. I see a huge improvement in my concentration and output. All with one simple click. As a leader, one of the most precious resources for you and your organization is your time. Perhaps email isn’t an enemy for you, but I suspect that there are one or two things that are major productivity drains. What are they? And what keeps you from clicking that magical button? Now while you think about that, I need to check an email that just popped up … It’s easy to receive my blogs by email. Just sign-up on Feedburner by clicking here.]]>