Thinking Before Sending

40% of your work time is spent toggling between the task demanding your focus and a communication tool such as email or Slack.  That would be like having someone stand next to your desk and ask you a question every other minute.  Can you imagine?  (I’m sure some of you can imagine because you have someone at work who asks you a question every other minute.)

According to a study: “Once you check an email, it takes you an average of 64 seconds to resume your original task. Even worse, another study found that when an email involves doing something outside our inbox, it takes over 9 minutes to return to the original task.”

I now think about this before I send an email or Slack message.  I am dragging someone out of productive thought.  So it better be worth it; it better be an email that they need to receive vs. something I could figure out on my own.  It’s interesting to see how many fewer messages you send when you think, “I am dragging someone out of their work to see this” before writing.

Do you leave communication tools open while you work?  Have you ever tried turning off email and all notifications for stretches of time?