|
|
 |
| |
 |
 article |
| |
|
Learn
to love email: confessions of an email addict and cures
for email addiction
By
Peggy Duncan
Peggy
Duncan is a personal productivity expert. To develop
skills that will help you manage email overload, check out
her
book, Conquer Email
Overload with Better Habits, Etiquette, and Outlook 2003.
Call me crazy,
but I love email!
And I'm tired of it getting a bum rap. I wouldn't say I'm addicted or
obsessed, but I do need it, want it, and will fight to keep it. But
when I'm working on something important, I can give it up, and
do--all
the time.
Just about everything that happens in
my business starts with email. I'm rarely a day away from it, and I
don't want to be. I look forward to subject lines such as “Need a
speaker for upcoming conference,” or “Would like to interview you
for an article…,” and my favorite “Notification of Payment
Received,” which indicates that someone has purchased something on
my Website.
And I just love the fact that I can
respond to requests quickly and easily with so little effort and
anytime of day or night.
Email…oh yes! Bring it on!
A lot of
you dread email.
Mostly because you're suffering from email overload. You don't
realize that the problem with email overload
is not the new messages coming in, but rather the mess that’s
already there…those hundreds or thousands of messages packed in your
Inbox waiting on you to do something with them. My
book, Conquer Email Overload with Better
Habits, Etiquette, and Outlook 2003, is a step by step process
for managing your email, contacts, calendar, and tasks that will
walk you through clearing your Inbox and will make you love email! And my article on
email pet peeves that tick people
off offers ways companies can change their email habits and create a
new or improved email culture.
15-Step
Process to Cure
Email
Addiction in the Workplace
Addiction in the case for email can be defined as a compulsive
behavior engaged in in spite of its harmful effects. If
you’re hooked on email and find yourself checking it even when
you’re working on something important and need to stay focused
(including sleep), you'll have to commit to breaking the habit.
For those of you who
get lost in email to the detriment of important work and a life,
Duncan offers the following 15 steps to get back in control.
Specific computer steps are for Outlook, but you can apply the same
techniques to your email client. If you can't, now is a good time to
switch.
-
Clean out
all that mess! Stop keeping junk you will never need again.
Get into a meeting with your Inbox and start purging, creating a
filing system for the keepers, and learning tips and strategies
for handling each message as you open it. If you stop using it as
a database, calendar, to do list, tickler file, or filing system,
you'll be able to keep it to one screen, and you'll feel more in
control.
You won't worry about missed deadlines, unfinished
work, or broken promises because you'll know what's there. I
guarantee it!
-
Shut your computer
down. Before you start working on something important, have
dinner with someone special, or turn in to get some much needed
rest, shut your computer down. The less convenient it is to check
email, the better.
-
Don’t start Outlook
when your computer starts. Right-click on the Start
menu, click Explore, find your Startup folder, and
move Outlook out of it. If it’s a shortcut to Outlook, you can
delete it, but make sure (the icon will have a bold, black arrow
pointing to the right to denote it’s a shortcut).
-
Make the default
view in Outlook
the Calendar (or Tasks).
Click the Tools menu, Options,
Other tab, Advanced Options, Browse,
click Calendar (or Tasks), OK.
-
Turn off the option
of automatically checking for incoming messages. Click the
Tools menu, Options, Mail Setup tab,
Send/Receive, untick Schedule an automatic send/receive,
OK.
-
Deactivate the new
message alert (the ding). Click the Tools menu,
Options, Preferences tab, E‑mail Options,
Advanced E‑mail Options. In the When new items arrive in my
Inbox section, untick Play a sound.
-
Cancel the
New Mail Desktop Alert.
In the Windows notification area (where your computer shows the
time), right-click on the Outlook icon. To clear the checkmark,
click Show New Mail Desktop Alert.
-
Make it
inconvenient to open Outlook. Remove Outlook from the System
Tray (to the right of the Start button). Right-click on the
Outlook icon, and click Delete (this does not delete
the software).
Then remove Outlook from the Start menu. Click Start. If
the Outlook icon is there, right-click on it, and click
Remove from this list.
To open Outlook later, you’ll have to find it. Click Start,
point to All Programs, point to Microsoft Office,
click Outlook.
-
Work on one
computer and use another one for email. This will be an
inconvenience, but try it until you kick the email addiction.
-
Stop using a BlackBerry
or PDA around the clock. People have lost their minds thumbing when they
should be thinking. No matter how much I love email, I don't want
to be tied to it 24/7/365. I don't want it finding me wherever I
am, constantly interrupting me from something that is most likely more important.
Box your BlackBerry or PDA up and ship it to yourself
with 3-5 day ground delivery. You'll find that life goes on.
If this isn't
feasible, turn it off and leave it in your car when you get home
(if you have a personal cell phone, leave the work BlackBerry in
your desk at night...don't take it home). You
will no longer talk to your spouse or co-worker with one eye on
them and another on email. You'll learn to live without it, and
will be more sensible when you get it back.
You'll also manage
your email better on your computer
(or a
PDA with
Outlook...like my iPAQ) because you can take full advantage of
Outlook's power, and you will have access to all your stuff.
Later, if you find yourself slipping, ship it again and again
until you get this down.
-
Find something else
to do. Make a list of all the things you've always wanted to
do...focusing on things that are realistic and affordable.
Create a
step-by-step action plan
to get some of this
done, whether it's learning something new, expanding a hobby,
doing some volunteer
work, and so on. Get away from the computer and replace it with
something that will make you feel good.
-
Concentrate
on breaking the habit. Wear a rubberband around your wrist. Going forward, every time you realize
you’ve stopped working on a project and jumped back to email,
stop. Pop yourself. Then remove your hands from the keyboard, take a deep breath,
then retrace your steps. Back up to what you were doing before you
checked email. Do this each time, and you’ll start to change.
(It’ll take you approximately 21 days to break
the habit, so don’t give up.)
-
Establish a routine
for checking. Once you ease the addiction, establish a routine
that works for you. Bear in mind that your boss, co-workers, and
clients want answers fast, but don't be foolish in thinking you
should be available the instant a message arrives. You are not
9-1-1. Set up a schedule for checking email. For example, if you
have a lot of energy in the morning and that's when you do your
best work, do the work first, then check email.
-
Don't let them
visit after they send the email. If someone knocks on your
door with the dreaded "Did you get my email? I need to see you
for a minute,"
mention
how you work, and get back to that important thing you were doing. You
don't want to replace something that can be handled quickly
(email) with something that could suck up too much time (visits,
phone calls). But you're going to have to pace yourself so you can
get everything done.
-
Organize everything around you (desk, computer files, Inbox,
clothes closet), streamline how you work, and learn the technology
you touch every day. If you do all these things, you'll end up
with extra hours in your day. Now you can get more things done and
stay on top of email too.
Start now and do everything you need to to break the hold email has
on you. If you do nothing else, clean out all that mess in your Inbox.
You'll begin to feel more in control, more on top of things, and the
urge to constantly check email will begin to subside. If it doesn't,
call Dr. Phil.
..............................................
You
may republish this article in its entirety if you add the
byline above and include a live link or mention of the
Website,
www.PeggyDuncan.com. Article is approximately
1,277 words. (Please notify us
via email
if you use this article:
training
at PeggyDuncan.com.)
UP |
|
|
|
|
|
