Hi Readers,

I wanted to share with you one of my experiences on improving personal productivity. Like many of you, I tend to feel that I have waaay too much on my plate when it comes to work tasks. A few years ago I had to start figuring out how to stop feeling like I was getting nowhere, and to actually start accomplishing stuff. Below is one of my solutions.

If you constantly feel that there are never enough hours in the day to get things done, this post might be of use to you.

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A few years ago I was working on a tech-support e-mail to an important client of the software company where I was working at the time. The customer sent us a lengthy e-mail complaining of numerous bugs that plagued the latest software version. Most of his complaints were a result of his own ignorance, but being in charge of the company’s technical support program I had to be very delicate in my e-mail response.

Right in the middle of the writing process a “Ping!” sound chimed from my PC. Outlook has dutifully informed me of an incoming e-mail message. I stopped writing in mid-sentence and checked the Inbox. My boss needed an “urgent” answer to an engineering question for a client. I typed up a response and attempted to get back to my client e-mail.

In order to regain my train of thought, I had to re-read the first part of my response and then spend about 3 more minutes remembering what I was planning on writing next. It took a total of 5 minutes to get back into the grove of writing. I managed to create another sentence when “Ping!!” Outlook yet again notified me of another in-coming e-mail.

Being a dutiful employee I never ignored e-mails. So interrupting my thought process for the second time, I popped open my inbox. It was one of the developers asking how to deal with a particular request from marketing. I sent him a quick reply and got back to my client e-mail. After yet another 5 minutes of re-grouping and re-focusing on the task at hand, I was off and running. But not for long… “Ping!!!” Outlook was once again demanding my attention. To make a long story short, Outlook interrupted me about four more times. The task of responding to a client e-mail, which should only have taken 15-30 minutes at the most, ended up taking me over 2 hours to complete, due to Outlook’s “You have mail!” reminder.

I would like to tell you that this was an exception rather than the norm, but that would be lying. Important work tasks were constantly interrupted by the “Ping!” of Outlook and things that should have taken me minutes to finish ended up taking hours. At the time,

I did not think that there was anything wrong with this system. Whoever contacted me would get a reply within minutes, which only demonstrated that I was a stellar employee.

That was until I read The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss (the new 2009 edition is now in bookstores). Ferriss explained that current typical workplaces are designed to promote employees wasting a lot of time on trivial tasks, which prevent them from accomplishing things that really matter to their career, happiness, and life. Tasks that should take minutes to complete take hours and sometimes days.

“Well, of course,” you might think, “that’s because you’re accomplishing other things along the way! You’re responding to other e-mails, calls, etc!” The problem is that many of those “other e-mails and calls” could be ignored. For example, did you really need to respond to a funny Youtube video from your co-worker?

Of course, there might be instances where the Youtube video is actually funny and co-worker that sent it to you is also a friend and you might WANT to respond to it. In this case you should batch it along with any other non-urgent e-mails. Ferriss’ concept behind e-mail batching is that you conduct all of your e-mail conversations at 1 or 2 specific times per day, eliminating e-mail interruptions during important tasks and thus becoming much more effective in managing your workload.

After reading Ferriss’ book I decided to give this idea a try. I showed up to work and took the following steps, following Ferriss’ advice.

Step 1: Turn off Outlook alert for new e-mails. No alert = no need to interrupt an important task at hand. I realize that some of you might be “on-call” and expected to respond to e-mails immediately. What if your boss has an emergency question during a client meeting? Or a co-worker needs your help immediately? Although let’s face it, there are very few “emergencies” that really can’t wait a few hours. For those types of emergences I would request that people contact me via my cell phone (see below).

Step 2: Turn off automatic e-mail send/receive option. This turned out to be extremely useful not just for increasing my productivity but for developing my people skills as well. How many times have you sent an angry e-mail, regretting it minutes later? This step allows you to write all of your e-mails at specifically allocated time. This way, you can digest whether or not to really send the not-so-great e-mail. A number of times, after turning off the auto send/receive option, I ended up going back to my e-mail drafts and re-writing or deleting them completely. It was a relief that Outlook did not actually send the e-mails until I had sometime to think about them.

Step 3: Check/respond to e-mail only twice a day. Granted, not all of you might be able to get away with this step at your workplace, but you can probably get away with some version of it. If you feel that your workplace truly cares about productivity and effectiveness of its employees you can create an e-mail auto-response to train those around you to be more effective with your time.

Below is an example of an auto-responder that I set up, following guidelines recommended by Ferriss. It worked for about a day, until my boss said that although he appreciates my goal of being more productive I should probably get rid of the auto-responder and simply check e-mail twice a day without it declaring that fact to the world. That worked for me.

If your workplace is truly interested in having you solve engineering problems and contribute to the bottom line in the fastest and most effective way, your co-workers would understand if you are not checking your e-mail during that time.

Here is an example of an auto-responder (for more examples see The Four Hour Workweek):

Dear Colleagues,

Due to high workload, I am currently checking and responding to e-mail twice daily at 12PM and 4PM EST.

If you require urgent assistance, please call my cell: 555-555-5555. Thank you for helping me become more efficient and effective. It will help me to serve you better!

Best,

Masha

At first, I was terrified of missing important e-mails. I was nervous about how the rest of my coworkers would respond after receiving my auto-responder. Surprisingly, the transition towards eliminating the most important work interruption went very smoothly.

Although the auto-responder idea did not fly at that particular workplace, I simply started checking my e-mail twice a day. And no disasters happened. The earth did not crack open and the sky did not fall. But I did become a heck a lot more productive with projects that really mattered.

How much better would your work and personal life be if you could accomplish truly important work goals in half the time? The three above steps for eliminating e-mail interruptions might be just the answer.

Try them out and let us all know how it worked in the comments below!

Masha

Last week I had a typical conversation with a potential client. After the engineer described a problem his company was having, the conversation went something like this:

Potential client (PC): “Great! You do have an impressive background and you’re right – we have a lot of gaps that you can help us fill.”

Me: “It helps to have a pair of expert eyes look over your R&D processes.”

PC: “That makes sense. We worked with consultants before and were amazed how much time they saved us! How much would your services cost?”

Me: Describe various services. Give a range of very reasonable prices.

PC: “Oh…well the budgets are tight, the economy is bad…no one has money…I think we will try to do this in-house…”

Me: “Haven’t you been trying to do this in-house for a while now?”

PC: “Well yeah, but the budgets are really tight…so we’ll try to do it ourselves… We’ll call some vendors, read some technical papers…”

Me: “How long do you think that process will take you?”

PC: “Well, probably much longer than if you were working with us…”

Me: “And how much do you estimate that time would cost?”

PC: “Well, since we’ll just be using in-house engineering time, it would not cost us anything.”

Me: “????!!”

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