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Over checking your email can be costly.
- Checking your email can be a counterproductive habit.
- It can also be costly for your employer - you can save 15 minutes a day by checking nine times instead of 15.
- Turning off email notifications and removing the icon from your task bar are just two strategies for reducing the amount of time spent on email.
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Imagine for a minute that you just finished a 45-minute task at work or got out of a 30-minute meeting. What do you do next? If you're like most professionals, you check your email. In fact, you probably check your email every time you transition between tasks and aren't sure what to do next.
Checking email when transitioning makes sense if that's the only time you have to check your email, but in most cases, it is a counterproductive habit. Professionals check their email an average of 15 times per day, though many check much more often. When I asked one leader I was coaching how often he checked email, he said, "I don't know. I just have it open all the time and I'm pretty much always looking at it."
Over checking email is costly, too. You can save 13 minutes per day in just switching costs by checking nine times (the amount needed to meet most recipients' expectations) rather than 15.
Why do most people default to email checking when they have higher-priority items to do? The dopamine rush created by a quick email check certainly plays a role, but another psychological phenomenon called cognitive tunneling is also at play. Cognitive tunneling - also known as tunnel vision - occurs when your focus narrows during periods of elevated stress, making you, in effect, blind to things in your environment that you would normally perceive.
Charles Duhigg popularized the concept in his book "Smarter Faster Better," describing how the pilot of an Air France flight crashed a plane full of people into the Atlantic ocean because he couldn't see the simple error he was making that, in normal circumstances, any pilot would have caught.
When cognitive tunneling happens, you focus on the most salient or obvious things in your environment and default to what you have done repeatedly. Unfortunately, email is often one of the most salient applications in your environment. As my client said, he always had his email open. Email notifications, which interrupt most people every few minutes, keep email in your awareness constantly.
Workplace stress increases the likelihood of cognitive tunneling. On particularly busy days when you need to manage your time most precisely, you're most likely to become blind to your true priorities during task transitions.
The key to overcoming cognitive tunneling and eliminating email over-checking is found in these four strategies.