It seems like a silly question on the surface but I would have to guess that like everyone else this day and age you check email too frequently.
Don’t get me wrong, I am just as guilty as the next guy, I can spend a whole morning feeling like a I have been working away never leaving my inbox.
I understand that most executives run their life out of Outlook. Between the instant communication, the calendar to keep you on track, and the task tracking to know who owes you what you never have to go elsewhere. But for the majority of employees checking email, checking IM, and poking around the web can create a tremendous drain on productivity.
I have often longed for the day our CRM software can replace our teams personal email boxes, capturing everything in the relivant spot for future record and use. Unfortunately this day is far off in the distance and instead I spend a significant amount of time trying to get my key people to create daily priorities and manage to them in spite of the numerous high priority interuptions that will come their way during a given day.
The reality of running a service business is that you have to respond to clients in a timely fashion. Availability is a basic tenant of providing OK service - you need to be there when your client needs you - never mind providing remarkable support (this is what Everon strives for).
A recent study put out by the makers of rescuetime software (I have not yet tried nor am I endorsing their software) suggested that a typical office worker checks email 50 times a day, checks IM 77 times, and visits over 40 web sites daily. Now even if this is close to true think about the productivity problems this presents. If it takes 4 minutes to get back on track with what we were doing after a distraction then this represents a butt load of lost productivity during a typical day.
So with all of this said I am not sure there is an easy solution. Time management is something we all will continue to work on during our careers and none of us will ever perfect.
Being congnicent of the type of things that can drain our productivity and constantly asking the question ‘what the the most valuable use of my time right now’ should help keep us, our employees, and our organizations on track and growing.
JC
