Back in November I told you about the new time tracking tool I had begun using: Toggl. After an extensive search I found this great (and simple) tool for seeing where my time went. Well I’ve been using it for three months now and I have some new-found insight. Well I’m sure you suspected this but what was that sound sucking the life out of my day?  Yeah, you guessed it.  EMAIL. 

I always suspected this but now I had quantitative proof and it was more than I expected.  Over 30% of my day was, make that is, going to the care and feeding of email.  And that’s not even counting all of those little click-overs I do when I hear the little mail arrival sound from Outlook.

So here’s my new Five Step Program to getting some of that time back:

Over the next two weeks, I hearby promise to:

1. Turn off the Outlook “ping” sound for new email.  This could be tough and it goes against my sense of curiousity, but I’m gonna try.
2. Stop reading all inbox junk mail, even if it looks interesting.
3. Put all of my e-newsletters directly into a special folder and only read them at designated times.
4. Unsubscribe to anything that does not pertain directly to my personal or business objectives and focus.
5. TRY to only check email only three times a day. OK, that’s not gonna work.  Let’s say six times per day.

I’ll report back on my success.

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