I find it quite interesting that when I ask managers what are your biggest time wasters at work? they often respond with email! and yet when I suggest they should check their email only 2 or 3 times per day, there’s extraordinary push back. 

Think about that for a minute. Doesn’t it seem a little absurd to allow a massive time waster to have so much influence on how and when you spend your valuable time?

Your brain is at its most rested and productive in the morning, and for many of us, we waste this time by going through wasteful emails. What would happen if you didn’t check your email until 10am. My guess is the world wouldn’t end.

Irrespective of how many emails you receive, it’s likely that as little as 10 percent will be important enough to require you to spend time and energy in responding. The other 90% are likely to be CC’s, FYI, junk and irrelevant updates.

So here are some tips to gain more control of your email:

1. Don’t send as many – think about other ways to communicate other than email
2. Choose the time you will check your emails and set up some discipline around this
3. Improve the quality of the emails with informative subject lines, and sufficient details to reduce the “back and forth”.