Toxic e-mail habits have diffused the importance of daily planning, a key component of time management. People allow the delivery of new messages to continually interrupt and impose on their daily plan. Your know what we’re talking about… You start by planning your day, then an email message arrives. Before you know it, you’re working on THAT rather than the stuff you decided was most important when you first started your day.
Wanna take control. Bring back once a day, daily planning! Prioritizing your tasks each day gives you a daily roadmap that will help you resist the tempting interruptions brought by new e-mail.
Establish a consistent time each day to plan your work. Some people prefer first thing in the morning, others find it makes more sense to do this at the end of the day. This is the time to plan all of your daily activities, including phone calls, projects, meetings, and tasks delivered by e-mail. Open your action folders and decide which of those tasks you will choose to work on during the day.
Sure, you may have one or two items that trump your work plan. Urgencies happen. But not to the extent that email interrupts you consistently throughout the day…
