Email is our Biggest Distraction

We’re all beginning to learn and accept that multitasking is indeed a myth. Changing our multitasking behavior will lead to greater productivity, but it will also take time. Email may be the right place to begin.

Dave Crenshaw, author of “The Myth of Multitasking: How ‘Doing It All’ Gets Nothing Done,” argues that the most common kind of multitasking doesn’t boost productivity—it actually slows you down. While background tasking like watching television while you work out can be fine, what he calls “switchtasking” is trying to juggle two tasks by refocusing your attention back and forth between them, and losing time and progress in the switch.

I contend email is the biggest distraction and the thing we try to multitask with the most.

In 2006 more than 6 trillion email messages were reportedly sent everyday. Last year that increased to an average of 160 messages per day per office worker. More than 88 percent of these messages were considered junk—spam, commercial newsletters or other unsolicited messages. And though filters can help reduce the junk, email still consumes way too much of our time.

Two things may help: 1) reduce the number of email messages you send and reply to, and 2) read email less frequently.

I wrote in an earlier post that email messages can easily work against you in conveying information. What may seem entirely clear to you when you write and send a message, can be totally misunderstood or misinterpreted by the receiver. This is due to limitations of the written word as well as other factors.

You can find lots of advice on the web with regard to email etiquette and advice on when and when not to use email.

Jim Gerace, who was earlier vice president of corporate communications at Verizon Wireless, issued employee guidelines on the proper use of email. I think the most important are:

• Email should bring closure to work, not create more work.
• Before you write an email, ask yourself if calling or visiting the recipient will bring better communication.
• Keep emails short. Pretend that the recipient isn’t going to open the email and you need to make your point in just the subject line or the space in the preview pane.
• If just one person needs information or clarification, don’t send it to a group.
• Stay accountable. Sending an email doesn’t transfer responsibility.
• Don’t send another email asking why you didn’t get an answer to the first one; call or visit the person you need information from.
• Don’t spend more than five minutes dealing with an email. When you go over this limit, stop and make a phone call.

Timothy Ferriss, in his best-selling book “The 4-Hour Workweek,” recommends looking at email only twice a day in order to focus on the job at hand. He does the same with phone calls so he can focus on getting things done rather than constantly losing time and productivity through what Crenshaw calls switchtasking.

Ferriss ensures senders and callers all know his unavailability because he adds this to his signature on his email messages as well as his voice mail message.

Not everyone can follow this advice, but I suspect most of us probably can and should. Simply turning off the sound and pop-ups for when a new email message arrives may better enable us to stay focused on our task.

What about you? Do you measure your day by how many email messages you receive? If you made the choice to no longer be ruled by your inbox, would you be more productive?

Overcoming the Resistance to Change

In my work with organizations seeking to implement change initiatives, I continually underestimate the amount of resistance that comes as a result. This shouldn’t come as a surprise because we all cling to the status quo.

But why is this? What is it about change that makes us so reluctant to welcome it?

Change is a natural state for all things that grow, including organizations. This is because markets change, needs change, people change and, as a result, organizations need to change to continue delivering the right products and services. To resist change is to resist growth and this leads to stagnation and death.

And yet, we resist.

It turns out there is a fairly predictable path every person within an organization must travel along when managing their own anxiety around change. This path typically moves along the following timeline:

1. Uniformed Optimism (blissful ignorance)
2. Informed Pessimism (informed anguish)
   Checking Out
   Overt (public)
   Covert (private)
3. Hopeful Realism (coming to terms)
4. Informed Optimism (realistic support)
5. Completion

This timeline comes from the work of Daryl R. Conner, author of “Managing at the Speed of Change,” and demonstrates how change initiatives can be implemented if we manage each stage effectively.

Resistance reaches its peak with the checking out phase. This is most responsible for derailing change initiatives and needs to be carefully monitored.

Overt checking out occurs when people resist the change openly by continually doing things the old way despite a new policy or procedure being put in place. It is deliberate and publicly demonstrated. This is a good thing too because the checking out can then be dealt with directly.

Covert checking out can be far more dangerous because it is done behind the scenes and in ways that are more difficult to detect. If a manager says all the right things in a meeting, but then goes back to his office and says something different to coworkers, it undermines the change and can be difficult to confront.

“Resistance is inevitable,” says Conner. “Many managers naïvely assume that if people like a change or think it is a good idea, they will not resist it. Significant change is a disruption in our expectations about the future. This disruption causes a loss of control, and we will resist this loss of control—even if we think the change is a sound one.”

According to Conner, resistance to change is governed by our perceived loss of control. And this loss of control (real or perceived) is sometimes not communicated because it is a feeling and we rarely speak about our feelings in the workplace.

The key is to manage resistance by recognizing the inevitability of it. Address it openly, honestly and consistently. Understand that resistance will be experienced differently based on positive or negative reactions to change. Overt resistance should be encouraged as it can get problems out in the open that can then be dealt with as they arise.

Realize that people may not be comfortable expressing the real reasons for resistance because it touches on their feelings and this requires an atmosphere for open and honest communication. Enabling an environment for an open conversation without fear of retribution may help uncover these feelings and thereby remove resistance.

Change is good. Change is necessary. And resistance to change is inevitable. Therefore, it is important to recognize this resistance and deal with it as it arises.