Mastering Your Email

(The Fallacy of Multi-tasking)

Often people think ... or feel like ... they are being quite productive because they are multi-tasking. Zipping through a project, while simultaneously keeping your email in box empty seems like quite an accomplishment.

It turns out, that after scientific study, we have discovered that bouncing back and forth between tasks actually lowers effectiveness and productivity.

Robert Croker, Ed.D., chair of the Human Resource Training and Development department at Idaho State University. Croker, who is certified in brain-based learning, says that the brain is not designed for multitasking. "It's a common misconception is that a brain is like a computer," Croker says. "A computer is designed to multitask. A human brain is not designed to function optimally in a multitask environment."

Research has found that each time a person switches back and forth between tasks, the brain goes through several time-consuming activities, including:

  • a selection process for choosing a new activity,
  • turning off the mental rules needed to do the first task,
  • turning on the mental rules needed to do the second task,
  • orienting itself to the conditions currently surrounding the new task

Research indicates that jumping back and forth between tasks can take four times longer to accomplish them - simply due to the time required for switching gears.

Furthermore, research shows that the quality of completed tasks goes down when multi-tasking. So how can we stop the email from taking over our work lives? One of my favorite time management tips causes resistance, but it is worth a try. The tip comes from workplace-organizer guru Julie Morgenstern, and it's simply this: Never check e-mail first thing in the morning. Think about it: When it comes to getting sidetracked, e-mail is a major culprit. The work that makes you money should come first.

Before you dismiss this idea, try it. Start your day, get some work done, THEN about mid-morning check your email. You will be astounded at how much more you accomplished. And those emails were answered just as well a little later.

Morgenstern recommends taking the time to get that profit-generating work done—and she means "done" as in task accomplished - before switching your mental gears to check e-mail.

But even after completing your most important task, stopping to check e-mail five, eight, twelve times a day requires an awful lot of brain switching - a.k.a wasted time. With this knowledge, it's easy to see why Morgenstern recommends establishing no more than four regular times that we check e-mail throughout the day.

One highly effective workplace I know of established a policy to check e-mail only three times a day. At 11:00 a.m. so they can dedicate an hour to written correspondence before lunch; at 1:00 p.m. to reply to any follow-up responses; and again at 4:00 p.m. so they can make adjustments to their next day's schedule.

Bottom line, multitasking has been proven to make us less effective, not more. And although e-mail can be a huge time saver, it can also be a huge time-waster if we become its slave instead of its master.