1. Checking email less often should increase your productivity by reducing the mental jumping back and forth between priorities. Even quickly reviewing the subject bubble can send your mind in another direction. (Obvious exception would be those whose jobs are in support, etc.)

2. Using filters is essential. Most people don’t even know they exist let along know how to use them.

3. I agree that not responding to each email as it comes in forces people to be self-sufficient and problem solve for themselves. I see the opposite from Anita regarding clear, well-thought out email communication. I feel email is too easy to slap together and copy the whole office. Why think for yourself when you can just email someone else?

Our standards of communication via email are too low! There is no clear subject, required action, background information and next steps in most emails. And if one had to photo copy a memo (for those who remember those days) and walk it around to each person’s desk, you might reconsider copying so many people.

4. Companies need to invest some time in training employees on managing email, i.e. how and why to file them, turn them into tasks and appointments, and establish company-wide email communication standards by which all employs are expected to follow. This issue has been ignored long enough by corporations.

@Erin – Amen to life being a series of choices, living within our means and focusing on what’s important.

I left corporate American on purpose and established a new life for myself!

“…Additionally, not all businesses are filled with inflexible supervisors or narcissistic managers who believe that their employees are serfs. {No – but many are.}
You can change jobs and work for a different company. {When was the last time you looked for a new job? And in this, economic environment?}
You can also start working with the HR department to change the rigid corporate culture where you work…”
{Sorry – that is the wrong approach – once HR is involved, and if it’s between you and your boss, typically, the boss wins. Not always, but the majority of the time.}
Overall – it is unfortunate, but in today’s corporate work environment this bad behavior is probably more the norm, rather than the exception. Layoffs and cuts, have reduced the number of workers, but not always the amount of work, that needs to be done.
In addition, the option to “change jobs and work for a different company” is not always available – the last statistic I heard was there are 6 people looking for work, for every 1 job open….so even IF one could find an alternate job that matches skills, education, location, interests, etc. – getting a great boss, while not impossible, is especially difficult to find, never mind figuring them out, before, accepting the job…So yes, there may be some great, wonderful working situations, but they are rather few, and more rare today, than they have been in the past…

I work for a software dev company, we rely on email all day long, hundreds is not unusual. But with Outlook, the notifier pops up in the corner of the screen with the sender/subject. I can ignore the “Coffee cake in the break room” messages, or those that are simply sales stats, etc. But things that need attention can be viewed and responded to immediately, if needed.

It’s much more efficient, to me and many others I know who work this way, to use the notifiers rather than just randomly switching over to Outlook to see what has come in.

Now here I am, the best in time-management, you see….I check my emails just twice a day…

lolz

Yeah, 15 minutes is often enough.

I’m a network security administrator. Some of our systems have “tripwires” that send me an email if they’re set off. Getting a notification would mean someone did something they shouldn’t, or a system is down, or something else happened that needs to be responded to IMMEDIATELY. Waiting 15 minutes to “check” on that notification could literally cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

For those emergency emails, set up a RULE. In Microsoft Outlook, you can click Tools –> Rules and Alerts. Set a rule for your urgent emails (you can do it based on words in the subject or body, by sender, etc). Then create an action that happens when that rule gets hit. I recommend playing a loud sound, but you can also start up an application like a big “ALERT! ALERT!” document. With the help of your telephone guy, you can also have it ring your cell phone.

You can set up these alerts for emails from your boss or someone else who demands instant gratification.

Then go ahead and check your email on your own schedule, whether it’s 15 minutes or a longer period of time, peaceful in the fact that you’re on top of things. Tada!

Additionally, not all businesses are filled with inflexible supervisors or narcissistic managers who believe that their employees are serfs. You can change jobs and work for a different company. You can also start working with the HR department to change the rigid corporate culture where you work. If you dislike “checking e-mail” as being your career, you have the power to change it.

Now, if you like “checking e-mail” as your job description, then feel welcome to ignore this post completely. The purpose of this post was to help people who feel as if they are wasting time constantly checking e-mail. If you like it, then don’t worry about it.

My typical work day is 9-6pm. I check email at 11AM and 3PM. I find that most problems get resolved by the same person that asks them. So you save time not only “not” checking email but also “not” resolving problems that can be easily resolved by the asking person with a bit more of their effort.

I started checking email “three” times a day and have since moved to “twice” a day. It’s hard, but breaking the habit lets one accomplish a lot of other work.

Not sure how long people on this blog have been out of the corporate world, but evidently it’s long enough to be out of touch with the way things work in bigger offices, where one’s ability to influence the way people work or communicate is directly proportional to one’s place in the corporate hierarchy. Unless you cater solely to people at the manager level and up, this sort of advice is more likely to cause friction and have negative repercussions on the lower-level employees who try it than to increase their productivity. There have been several comments to this effect on similar previous posts, yet they have constantly and consistently been ignored.

Also: like Viv, I prefer to be contacted by email, because it forces people to *think* about their request and articulate it properly in writing. I have a few colleagues who prefer to call me; then they “um” and “er” for 5 minutes trying to tell me what they are looking for, and usually I end up asking them to send me an email stating exactly what they are trying to get from me.