Learn to minimize technology distractions and maximize your efficiency at the office.
Now that the holidays have passed and many of us have new electronic devices, it’s a good time to think about how we incorporate technology into our work. Do we use our devices to their full capacity, integrating them into our tech-driven existence? Or are they distracting us from what we really should be doing?
If you haven’t recently thought about how technology may be impacting your productivity, consider these findings:
- According to the E-Policy Institute, the quantity of emails an average employee receives is growing at a rate of 66 percent per year.
- Cisco predicts that the Internet will grow to four times its current size in the next four years. This is largely due to the proliferation of tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices.
- A typical office employee checks his/her email up to 50 times per day, according to RescueTime, a firm that develops time management software.
- 46 percent of companies offer no email training to new employees. They give you an email address and login information and start sending you things, assuming that you know how to use their platform.
As if foretelling our current situation, in 1971 the New York Times quoted English chemist and novelist Charles Percy Snow as saying, “Technology… is a [peculiar] thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.” For all of the wonderful reasons that we can no longer live without it, what technology demands of us has us slowly bleeding to death.
The Tried and True
You can minimize the negative impact of technology by implementing some common, but significant suggestions:
- Eliminate audible notification. Your computer and mobile device should never be set to notify you about new email messages.
- Do not check your email first thing in the morning. You checked email before you left the office last night and probably once or twice at home. When you arrive at the office, start the day with a project that needs your focused attention. Morning is typically the quietest time, so use it to your advantage. You can finish that report that’s been hanging over you while everyone else is wasting time on the Internet.
- Block off times in your day to be “technology-free.” Create periods during the day when you do focused work, and other times when you deal with email. Research suggests checking email three to four times per day is optimal. Some companies have even begun to mandate periods of quiet time for their employees to minimize interruptions and do focused work, such as “no email until 10am.” This encourages more face-to-face interaction, and employees report that they actually save time. A back-and-forth email exchange of six emails that stretches out over a whole day is best replaced by a two-minute phone conversation.
- Use the “one touch” rule. Try to have only one interaction with each email. Open it up and act on it: reply, delegate/forward, file or delete it. And never use your “trash” folder as a file. File the things you need to hold onto, and empty your trash once a week. The goal is to avoid rereading the same email over and over. This technique works for snail mail too.
- Less is more. Try to limit email replies to three or four sentences. More than that and you should pick up the phone—unless you need to document something in writing.
- Immediately unsubscribe from at least five newsletters, blogs, etc. If you think about it, you will find there are numerous weekly or daily emails that you delete more often than you read.
- Use a separate account to get personal emails, such as the weekly Best Buy ad, your cable bill or your children’s school grades.
New Suggestions
The upside of technology is that companies are constantly creating new ways to help us work smarter. The downside is that you have to carve out time to do some research about what will truly be of value to you. While there are no one-size-fits-all recommendations, here are a couple of suggestions to get you started.
- Use filtering tools or “rules” to automatically move emails out of your inbox and into specified folders. Simply search “rules for… ” and the name of your email platform (Outlook, Gmail) for instructions.
- Try getpocket.com for all of those online articles that you want/need to read, but don’t have time to immediately. It allows you to create a queue of web-based content that you can access from your smartphone, computer or tablet.
- Time your internet usage. Use a browser extension like Leechblock (Firefox) or StayFocused (Chrome) to avoid slipping into the web-surfing and Facebook abyss.
- Look at businessinsider.com’s annual list of top apps to see what is new. Items of note mentioned in the fall include Box (on-line document storage), CardMunch (imports business card information via a photo), CloudOn (runs Microsoft Office on your phone or tablet) and Evernote (helps you remember everything).
- If you use Twitter as a work tool, then use it to keep up with meaningful, helpful material. You probably do not need to know what some NBA star’s cat ate for breakfast. You can always create a second account for tracking your personal interests.
- And for the phone, Future-Text lets users program text messages to automatically be sent at a later date and time.
There is a reason why your IT staff is indispensable. They are tech-savvy (They know how things work); whereas most of us are merely tech-dependent (We can’t live without it). This new year, resolve to become more tech-savvy. Set aside one hour per week this month to do research about the devices you own and their capabilities. Then you can make changes using that information and the above ideas to help you tame your technology, improve your productivity and get some time back in your day. iBi
Jennifer Cross is the owner of Princeton Leadership Services, a consulting firm specializing in leadership training and development programs. Learn more at PrincetonLeadershipServices.com.
