An Email to Help With Email

By

Friends,
 
After I interviewed Quicken Loans’ Chairman Dan Gilbert on my radio program last week, he and I were commiserating about our unceasing volumes of e-mail.  We’re bailing messages out of our Blackberries, but our buckets seem inadequate to keep pace with the incoming volume.  Then I was talking with someone at a reception the next day, and she said, “multi-tasking has changed the world, and there is nothing we can do about it.”   Well, to me that last clause has always been like a red cape in front of a raging bull.  “Nothing we can do????”
 
I am determined to fight back this week.  Fight for myself.  For my kids.  And offer aid to my co-workers and friends.  Because I’m quite sure this multi-tasking’s not all good.  There are two aspects that demand resistance. 
 
First, there is mounting evidence that multi-tasking diminishes overall productivity.  Dr. David Meyer, Chair of the Cognition and Perception Area in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan* is one of a number of researchers who have been observing people as they attempt to multi-task and carefully clocking times and results.  Dr. Meyer says that as people toggle, for instance, from email to other computer work, or from driving to cell phone calls, his clinical work is proving that their minds routinely lose time in the switch.  The one-second or so loss, Meyer suggests, can be fatal when you’re driving at 60 miles per hour and your concentration must be re-adjusted.  Researchers suggest we try serial activity — finish one thing, then start the next – as a way to more efficiently get the work done.  My commitment: I will NOT switch to email while in the middle of key concentration work this week, and I won’t drive-and-talk.
 
Perhaps even more damaging than the switching between work and work, is the multitasking between work and people.  I asked a roomful of HR managers last week how many were doing email and voicemail between 7 pm and 7 am.  About 70% of the hands went up.  I didn’t ask how many had kids.  Or how many of their kids were talking to them while they were emailing.  I am guilty of it.  Too often.  I make kids and co-workers and my spouse wait, as I follow the trail of an email whose rectangular flag has grabbed my attention.  How do I measure that loss?  More important, how do I start to get it back?
 
I LOVE email, but if you’re like me you’ve got to manage it better to lead
 
With your best self,
 
 
Dan

 

*  You can read a press release about one of Dr. Meyer’s studies here: http://www.apa.org/releases/multitasking.html

  • We have an email system at my school and it is a great thing for taking care of the routine stuff such as reminders and due dates. I think email and electronic communications can be a wonderful tool but it doesn’t solve everything or automatically save time.
    For one thing, I can formulate ideas and respond to questions more quickly when I speak. It takes more time when I type. In a verbal conversation it is easier to pick up on the tone of voice and answer questions as they occur in the context of the conversation. In most instances, I prefer a live phone conversation over the exchange of email volleys anytime. Having said that, I am always grateful that my son can email his family from Iraq!

    Reply

  • How to get out of Email jail
    Thanks for this article, Dan. In my seminars I find that email is now the #1 time-waster. Here’s my take on it: The more you give in to distraction, the more you look for distraction. We have the false notion that cleaning up emails, getting them out of the way, is productive. It’s not. It’s like clearing the last leaf from your lawn. As soon as you put your rake in the garage (blower now, I suppose), there’s another leaf on the ground. The ultimate I’ve heard is about a man — just before a nervous breakdown — who was on his driveway at 3:00am in the rain with his leaf-blower! Email is never done — get over it! Let the leaves, dishes, laundry, email pile up for a while.

    The solution: Let the “executive mental control” that Meyer writes about take over. Limit the times you look at email each day to 1, 2, or 3 specific times. For many people that means: First thing in the morning (unless you have superhuman control and can actually make yourself do what is important before doing what’s urgent), after lunch, and before going home. There is no email that can’t wait 2 or 3 hours. Of course, both the sender and receiver need to acknowledge that. The sender, in the case of bosses or clients, need to give up the power they yield by letting you not have to slavishly jump to their every whim and command the moment they send you an email. On our part, as receivers, we need to give up the false image we have of our own importance. The sender will survive an hour or two without your godlike response.

    Reply

    • Excellent comments on managing the email. It seems to me that I am in charge of my email..not the other way around. I am not on call 24/7. If the problem is serious enough to require my immediate attention someone should tell me in person or pick up the phone!

      Reply
    • >