Claire Burge says she cut email out of her life completely for an entire year and gained three hours per day as a result.
“Email takes over our lives, it rules the work day. You’re inbox-chasing all day,” says Claire.
Claire is the founder of Get Organised Ireland and co-founder of Sorted Circus – two companies that focus on boosting productivity, generally in the workplace.
Claire’s educational background is in industrial psychology and her whole career has centred around process optimisation, system optimisation and behaviour in the workplace. She delivers workshops, public talks and business turnaround projects for clients. Her advice is very relevant to business owners and indeed to anyone working in an environment that uses a lot of email and engages in meetings.
Claire herself was processing x amount of emails per day, but 80% of them were tasks.
“People think my experiment is extreme, but I want to challenge how people work. If I look at the bigger problem, it’s rooted in email. Email is the number one time trap. The reason email consumes our lives is because people are using their inbox as a task box. Your inbox is just a dumping ground for so much information, it’s a very big distraction area. Don’t use your email as a task list.”
Claire says her first light bulb moment was “why wasn’t I in a task management system? In a task management environment everybody can see everyone else’s task list.”
A task management system can also tackle another problem created by email – hoarding inside an email inbox.
“Hoarding happens because people are saving documents. The inbox is a completely closed environment. We are constantly covering our backs, but in a task environment or any environment that’s open, such as a shared document or a shared task environment, documents are visible so people won’t feel the need to keep copies anymore.”
Email tips
• Take stuff out of your inbox and write the list elsewhere. • People still leave their email open all day. It’s just a distraction. They should have specific times when they check their email. • When you do check your email, action it. People are checking their emails in bed at night and when they get up in the morning, which really is pointless because they’re not doing anything with that email. They’re getting their mind racing for no reason.“If you start applying those three main principles, you’re freeing up your workday to work,” says Claire.
“You’re not answering email all day. Your workday should never be controlled by other people. Communicate to people very clearly when you’re accessible and when you’re not. Because if you’re in inbox-chasing mode, people expect a reply within an hour.”
However, this is not the only thing Claire recommends to make working life more productive. Employees have different ways of time management and Claire says a company needs the five different styles to make a team.
Time tips
• Pure work zone: Create a pure work zone in the day. It’s a meeting-free and email-free zone. It could run from 9.30am until 11am every day. When concentrating on work, everyone is centred around action and not people. It’s a very big mindshift to make. A healthy manager won’t be averse to that – communicate why you’re doing this.• Cut down on meetings: The reason for a meeting is to figure out tasks and who needs to do them. Meetings involve conversations about “this person needs to do this, this person needs to do that”. That’s why they’re such a waste of time. They are meetings about tasks. People often forget the agenda, which is pushed around by email and they are not bringing task management tool systems into the meeting. Then the minutes are taken and pushed around – rather than actioning things there and then. We find most of our clients don’t use the agenda and if they do use it they are not sticking to it at all. If you have a task management system in a company, meetings and meeting times drastically reduce. Visit www.claireburge.com and a href="http://www.getorganised.com/" target="_blank">www.getorganised.com
Claire Burge says she cut email out of her life completely for an entire year and gained three hours per day as a result.
“Email takes over our lives, it rules the work day. You’re inbox-chasing all day,” says Claire.
Claire is the founder of Get Organised Ireland and co-founder of Sorted Circus – two companies that focus on boosting productivity, generally in the workplace.
Claire’s educational background is in industrial psychology and her whole career has centred around process optimisation, system optimisation and behaviour in the workplace. She delivers workshops, public talks and business turnaround projects for clients. Her advice is very relevant to business owners and indeed to anyone working in an environment that uses a lot of email and engages in meetings.
Claire herself was processing x amount of emails per day, but 80% of them were tasks.
“People think my experiment is extreme, but I want to challenge how people work. If I look at the bigger problem, it’s rooted in email. Email is the number one time trap. The reason email consumes our lives is because people are using their inbox as a task box. Your inbox is just a dumping ground for so much information, it’s a very big distraction area. Don’t use your email as a task list.”
Claire says her first light bulb moment was “why wasn’t I in a task management system? In a task management environment everybody can see everyone else’s task list.”
A task management system can also tackle another problem created by email – hoarding inside an email inbox.
“Hoarding happens because people are saving documents. The inbox is a completely closed environment. We are constantly covering our backs, but in a task environment or any environment that’s open, such as a shared document or a shared task environment, documents are visible so people won’t feel the need to keep copies anymore.”
Email tips
• Take stuff out of your inbox and write the list elsewhere. • People still leave their email open all day. It’s just a distraction. They should have specific times when they check their email. • When you do check your email, action it. People are checking their emails in bed at night and when they get up in the morning, which really is pointless because they’re not doing anything with that email. They’re getting their mind racing for no reason.“If you start applying those three main principles, you’re freeing up your workday to work,” says Claire.
“You’re not answering email all day. Your workday should never be controlled by other people. Communicate to people very clearly when you’re accessible and when you’re not. Because if you’re in inbox-chasing mode, people expect a reply within an hour.”
However, this is not the only thing Claire recommends to make working life more productive. Employees have different ways of time management and Claire says a company needs the five different styles to make a team.
Time tips
• Pure work zone: Create a pure work zone in the day. It’s a meeting-free and email-free zone. It could run from 9.30am until 11am every day. When concentrating on work, everyone is centred around action and not people. It’s a very big mindshift to make. A healthy manager won’t be averse to that – communicate why you’re doing this.• Cut down on meetings: The reason for a meeting is to figure out tasks and who needs to do them. Meetings involve conversations about “this person needs to do this, this person needs to do that”. That’s why they’re such a waste of time. They are meetings about tasks. People often forget the agenda, which is pushed around by email and they are not bringing task management tool systems into the meeting. Then the minutes are taken and pushed around – rather than actioning things there and then. We find most of our clients don’t use the agenda and if they do use it they are not sticking to it at all. If you have a task management system in a company, meetings and meeting times drastically reduce. Visit www.claireburge.com and a href="http://www.getorganised.com/" target="_blank">www.getorganised.com
This is a subscriber-only article
SHARING OPTIONS: