the cost of unnecessary interruptions is $650 billion per year

This is mostly mundane matters, in large part dealing with email, IM, SMS, etc.  The majority of the cost is in the time it takes to get back to work

28% of a workday is spent in interruptions

For those familiar with Stephen Covey’s quadrant, this is in the “Not Important, Not Urgent” category.  Another 20% is spent in meetings (though whether these are important or ugent is not addressed), and part of 25% is spent writing “productive” emails.  This is almost 3 hours in a 10 hour workday.
On the email side, new terms are hitting the street such as “email apnea” (the condition of holding your breath when you realize you have 300 new emails), and “email bankruptcy” (where you have so many emails you have to delete your inbox and try again.)   Gmail recently added a “take a break” feature in Gmail, which locks you out of your mail for 15 minutes.

In light of this, I’ve decided to add a few more things to my list of email productivity.

Pick up the phone

This is an easy one.  Instead of exchanging 15 emails between 3 people to figure out a good time to schedule that meeting, pick up the phone and ask, how’s 2pm friday? Then send one email out that verifies the meeting is at 2pm friday.

Reply to one

Catch yourself wearing out that “reply to all” button?  Try the one next to it.  You know the one I mean: the one that won’t spam everyone else.  If everyone else needs to know the outcome of your conversation with Nancy, then summarize it after you’re done and send them an update.  Hopefully after they read it, they’ll resist the urge to say “thanks” and…

Reply to none

Aggressively reduce email by passively not responding.  If you’re planning on just saying “got it!”, skip it.

Let them wait.

I’m guilty as charged: My email app is running all the time.  As soon I see a new message, I stop what I’m doing as if the fate of the world depends on me checking that one email.  That’s bad.  I should only be checking email every few hours, for a few minutes.

Separate your to-do list from your email.  When you’re done with a task, go back to your to-do list for your next task.  If that next task is “check email”, then check email.  And, to eat my own dogfood, I just changed my “Check email every…” setting to 1 hour. And shut off my email app.

And, in case any of you are still doing it…

Do NOT forward that spam to 5 other people!

It won’t bring you happiness. It will bring you eternal animosity from your friends.

Got anything else? leave a comment.