I used to spend a few hours a day dealing with email. I’d get about 200-300 emails a day. There was a lot of spam. I installed a spam filter, and that helped a lot, but about 25-50 clever new spammers slipped past my defenses each day. I could delete them quickly, in just seconds per email, so I did. But then I began to realize how much of my attention they were diverting.
A full in-box is a horrid thing. It’s depressing. As fun as it is to delete half of the messages as spam, it’s a distraction. So I did this: rather than spend 2 seconds deleting a spam message, I resolved to never delete one again. Instead, I’d spend 10 seconds creating a filter to ensure that I’d never get that piece of spam again. Then, I’d let the new filter delete the message. Within two weeks, my inbox spam went from 50 a day to 1 or 2 a week. It’s very refreshing to open my email and see only things I actually have to deal with.
Now, let’s take that lesson a step further. . .
Lifespam
My work life was full of distractions. I call them lifespam. Those are all the little things you don’t budget time for but that you find you have to do anyway. A client emails asking for a budget update. You have to answer. Your boss asks for a copy of last month’s expense report. You have to give it to her. Or do you?
So, here I was with no spam in my inbox, but still getting 50-100 requests that I do little things. Read an article, find a report, look up some figures, reset a password, etc. I started applying the same spam filtering technique that worked on email spam to such lifespam.
When I get a request for anything, via email or by phone, I no longer simply make it go away by doing it. I first ask,
Does this need to be done? If not, delete.
Does it need to be done now? If not, postpone (I have a folder for stuff to get around to at my convenience, like sites to read or technologies to research).
If it needs to be done now, am I the only person who can do it? If no, delegate.
Finally:
can I automate a process that keeps me from ever getting this request from anyone again?
That might mean taking the time to teach someone else to do it and then letting it be known that Stan is from now on the keeper of all expense reports. Or it might mean adding a piece of data to the weekly project reports my assistant prepares (like total billed to date), so no one ever asks me about that again.
Two months since I started doing that, my inbox is easy to empty. I get between 2 and 10 emails a day. They are all interesting and important. I can deal with every last one in half an hour or less per day. I do that from noon to 12:30 every day. A quick skim at 4:00 lets me know if anything urgent has turned up in the afternoon.
You can’t imagine the impact that has had on my productivity. I used to plan to do eight hours of work each day, but only do four hours of work and four hours of lifespam. Now, I plan to do seven hours of work a day and I do it all. I’m twice as effective and far more satisfied at the end of the day. My clients are more happy; my employees are more happy. Things get done.
This approach was inspired by David Allen’s Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
