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Check Out Your E-Habits


Another week has ended. And Wholesale Lance Stephenson Jersey , despite moving at the speed of light, you've once again barely made a dent in your more important goals or projects. Just about everyone wishes they had more time to focus on the really important things: Activities directly tied to job or key business objectives. Spending time with key people ? at work and at home. Exercise. Fun.(Remember "fun"?)

Intellectually anyway, we do understand the need to differentiate "forest from the trees" priority-wise. But with more "trees" to manage than ever, it can be tough even locating the forest Wholesale Paul George Jersey , never mind spending any meaningful time there. By far, the biggest source of new trees contributing to the workload logjam is email. But to view the problem of email as a problem of volume only is to miss out on the real problem. If the practices of the thousands of executives and managers who've attended TimeDesign's? Power of Focus Management seminar are any indication, email itself is not the problem. The number one impediment to focusing on the big picture is how we respond to these "electronic trees." In other words, if you want more time for your high priorityactivities Wholesale Reggie Miller Jersey , look no further than yourself.

We Have Met the Enemy and It Is Us

Here are three e-habits that undermine our ability to get to our high impact activities and some effective Focus Management? techniques that can help:

1. Lost in the E-woods by 8:15 am

What's the first thing you do when you arrive at your desk in the morning? Check your email, right? We say we want to spend more time on our forest activities but our behaviors indicate a love for the "e-trees." Yet, when you begin the day by jumping into the trees, it's easy to get lost in the woods. Sure you're busy Cheap Bojan Bogdanovic Jersey , but before you know it, it's quitting time and you never got near the high-impact stuff.

Solution: Don't worry; you can still check your email. Give your forest activities the attention they deserve by making a separate list of your current goals and projects. Then use the time while your email is downloading to review this list and build in time that day to work on one or more of these big picture activities.

2. E-Hugging

If the findings of a pre-course survey on the work habits of managers and executives at a major cable television network are any indication, the American office landscape is populated by "e-huggers." These employees reported logging into email on average, 16 times a day Cheap Myles Turner Jersey , with one manager checking in a whopping 50 times. Based on an eight-hour day, this manager is interrupting her focus every 9.6 minutes. These constant self-interruptions make it virtually impossible to spend any meaningful chunk of time in the forest.

Solution: If your email program constantly prompts you each time a new message arrives, minimize temptation by either turning off this feature or closing the program altogether. Then resolve to check your email no more than three times a day. A morning, midday and end-of-day retrieval is optimal. If you are an ardent e-hugger Cheap T. J. Leaf Jersey , begin by weaning yourself down to six. Use the time you would have spent reacting to email to proactively concentrate on the big picture.

3. E-voiding the Forest

The pre-technology way to avoid buckling down was a stroll to the coffee machine. With the arrival of email, procrastinators never have to leave their desks. The 8:00 am leap into the e-trees and the continuous e-hugging throughout the day are but symptoms of a larger problem ? eprocrastination. Not convinced? Take the Focus Management? Pop Quiz: You have 45 minutes. Are you more likely to? A) Start on that high impact project you've been putting off all week or B) check your email. If you said "B," join the club. Out of the thousands of people who have responded to that question, very few said they'd tackle the project. As for the rest of us Cheap Thaddeus Young Jersey , we tell ourselves that the reason we go for the email is because it's faster and easier. But that's not the only reason everyone heads for the virtual trees. Handling the small stuff addresses our uniquely human need to feel productive. With easily five major projects in varying stages of incompletion at any given time, employees rarely feel "done." Email satisfies our need to complete something. That is, until the next time.