strategy

how to get more done by doing less

manage your distractions, interruptions. how often do cpas check email? join the survey. get the answers.

by rick telberg

several times every day, cpas across the nation ask themselves the same questions: “should i finish what i’m doing? or should i take a quick peek at my email inbox?”

according to the institute of psychiatry at the university of london, email may be the worst thing for productivity since… hmmm, just a minute. i’m trying to remember…

oh yeah! the researchers found that checking your email can be more damaging to office productivity than getting stoned. the experiment actually had subjects take an iq test while undistracted; while distracted by emails, phone calls and other digital temptations; or while under the influence of the evil weed. while the undistracted came away with the highest iq scores, the online digitized multitaskers performed less intelligently than their ad hoc stoner cohorts.
author and business philosopher tim ferriss has extrapolated that experiment to suggest that while multitasking may help people look busy, it doesn’t help them actually get much done.

i don’t know whether dipping into your email inbox 10 or 20 thousand times a day qualifies as addiction, but i must admit there’s something pleasantly desperate about it. maybe it’s the hope of receiving good news.

maybe it’s the fear of missing something important.

maybe it’s a desire to be doing something—anything—other than what you should be doing.

whatever the reason, dealing with email is a distraction. and distractions cut into your time more than you may realize.

though it takes but a moment to check your email and only a few moments to respond to someone’s urgent-urgent-urgent demand for attention, it takes many more moments—as much as 45 minutes worth of moments—to refocus on whatever it was you were doing (or, more likely, not doing) in the first place.

ferriss offers some good suggestions for minimizing your email busy-ness and maximizing your productivity. marijuana, i should hasten to add, is not among his suggestions. rather, he suggests not taking even the tiniest peek at your email until… can you stand it? noon.

yes, noon. at that point, between the project you were working on and the lunch break you’re about to take, you should batch process your email. take care of all of it—wham, bam, slam, dunk—and then go to lunch.
and then don’t check your email again until 4 p.m., at which point you batch process the afternoon bunch and then, yes, go home. ferriss also suggests that you set your email application to automatically reply with a message informing senders that you will not respond to email until noon or 4, whichever comes first. you might also mention that you will respond only to email that requires a decision.

in fact, you can ward off incoming email by sending out email in an if/then format. for example: “if the client wants to meet with me then make an appointment for thursday afternoon. if she doesn’t want to meet then ask her to call me on thursday afternoon or send an email explaining the problem. if you can answer her questions then do so.”

see how the if/then format effectively makes decisions in advance? that precludes the need for one or more emails, one or more delays, one or more distractions, one or more disruptions to your productivity.

bottom line: don’t let the speed of email delay your day. if you want to get something done, then just do it… and nothing else.

now it’s your turn: how often do cpas get interrupted? what can you do about it? join the study. get the answers.

comments: rants, raves, idle thoughts or questions? write to the editor.

[first published by the aicpa]