You can finally stop this bad habit

You have 20 minutes in between meetings, so what do you do?

Check email.

Your 1:30 appointment cancels at the last minute, so what’s your go-to?

Fall into email.

You have three high-priority projects due next week but see some “white space” on your calendar, so what’s your next move?

You know the answer. You get sucked into email.

Stop that. Now, please.

Having a few minutes or a break is not an invitation to dive into email.

Things will be fine, in fact, a lot better, if you get your head out of email quicksand and focus on the other 729 tasks on your list.

Instead, schedule specific times to check and respond to email.

Like 20 minutes after each one hour of other work.

Or before your first meeting, after lunch, and an hour before you wrap up for the day.

That way you know you’ll be checking your email soon enough, but you don’t need to check it every 47 seconds.

Here’s the key.

When you’re not in your scheduled email time, close the email tab.

Just like that.

Take your sweet little cursor, click that X on your email tab, and lose the temptation to jump back in.

Don’t rely on willpower. It won’t work.

If email is open, you will check it. Incessantly.

Clients tell me they can’t be away from email. They get urgent requests all day long.

I’m not suggesting you close your email for hours on end (unless that works for you).

Rather, building up your muscles to not be notified, react, or respond for even 20 minutes is your first step to liberation.

Distractions are thieves.

They rob you of presence, creativity, and strategic thinking.

If there’s any part of you wishing for better results, better attention, and simply, a better life, do not continue to give up your power to other people’s demands – all.day.long.

You will get and stay focused.

You will stop ending the day feeling like you got nothing done.

You will feel more proud of what you accomplished.

You don’t always need to be in your email.

You need to have space from it to be more effective.

Xo,

Mridu

P.S. Here are two ways we can work together:

1) Do you know strategies to focus but can’t implement or stick to them? We should talk. I’d love to help you get on top of all your distractions. Schedule a time here.

2) Want your team to feel less stressed and more accomplished? Shoot me a reply to discuss or to connect me to a decision-maker about training in your company.