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
“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
Visit www.claireburge.com and a href="http://www.getorganised.com/" target="_blank">www.getorganised.com