Is Gmail Destroying Your Productivity?
I love Gmail. So much that I moved my primary email to GoogleApps – which has other benefits other than email but that’s another blog post.
I love the way archives, labels and starring works. It fits in nicely with my own GTD system. I can get things done with it.
In the The 4-Hour Workweek,
Tim Ferris says to quit using web based email and use a desktop client instead or rather, a system where you have to actively click a “retrieve email” button to get your new mail. Reason, because email clients that deliver your email instantly (Web based mail and IMAP) distract you.
You could be working on replying or sending an email out when something new comes in. You feel compelled to click on it. If you are forced to click on a button, you don’t ‘know’ new mail is there and you will get what you need done, get out of there and that’ll be it until your next scheduled time to check email.
Looking back that does have a ring of truth in it. I do feel compelled to open the new mails that I get while I am working on something else… yet, no system not even my beloved Thunderbird allows me to manage my emails as well as Gmail/GoogleApps does. Also, I love the ability to be able to work from both my Mac and PC regardless where I am my email is constant.
What to do? Could Gmail be derailing my productivity and ‘working less is more’ efforts?
The bottom line will probably have to come from sheer determination, will power or self control. My friend Kelly McCausey gave me one fantastic tip. Only deal with every new mail once. This is incidentally what is proposed by David Allen too.
Only deal with whatever it is you have to deal with once.
So when I’m not ready, and that email is something I have not been expecting, it doesn’t get opened until the next time when I’m ready. Now, this is not perfect, some days curiosity wins, will power fails. But generally, so far so good.
Do you use web based email or set your email readers to IMAP? Have you noticed you spend more time on your mail because of it?
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well you have to cick on the email to read it, so I suppose you could either not open gmail, or don’t click on any messages until it’s email time.
Yes this is right. I catch my mail two times a day. Maybe I will give the book a try ;-).
@Carrie: True, but I’m such a stickler for keeping my inbox ‘clean’. I have a zero inbox mail policy – Having main in the inbox irks me LOL I feel I have to process my inbox.
@XsiteProTemplates – I hope you’ll return with a real name some day 🙂 The book is OK. I talk about it a lot – doesn’t mean I live my life by it. Life for a single bachelor is wayyyy different than a wife and mother of 3 kids.
I don’t understand the difference between what Tim F is saying and what gmail does except that I think he said that he checks email once a week.
I know some people who check their email seldom and some who check it every minute. It’s a type of personality, don’t you think. If you decide not to be distracted, you won’t be. I’m the type who checks mail when I get it but if I’m meditating or doing yoga or qigong, emails will never distract me unless I need and want a distraction. 🙂
You are very hard on yourself. Be kind to Lynette!!!
@Myrna: Oh boy, you’re not the only one who says that to me. Hubs always complains I set too high standards for myself 🙁
It’s a rough life working in the Web world. What other job do you spend most of the day working in a web browser which with a click you can also find the latest news from cnn or your email from gmail. If I were in a boring web job I’d be too distracted!!!