21 Jul 2014 Email alerts are evil

Time management failure

First, I think: “This per­son is not in con­trol of their pri­or­it­ies and does not man­age their time ef­fect­ively.” A heavy con­clu­sion, from very little data. But let’s see… if you have email alerts on, you are telling the email sys­tem to in­ter­rupt whatever you are do­ing to let you know that you have new email. If you are try­ing to get things done, this is a tac­tic­al er­ror. And when you are at work, pre­sum­ably, you are try­ing to get things done. This is a time man­age­ment is­sue.

My philo­sophy on time man­age­ment is this: I man­age my time by pri­or­it­ies. I am de­lib­er­ate about where I fo­cus my at­ten­tion. I am al­ways ask­ing my­self: what is the most im­port­ant thing to be do­ing now? What is the most ef­fect­ive way for me to tackle that prob­lem? How can I put all my con­cen­tra­tion in­to what is in front of me? Dis­trac­tions take away from fo­cus, so should be elim­in­ated. I’ve found that plan­ning time around pri­or­it­ies and fo­cus is FAR more ef­fect­ive than simply re­spond­ing to the next thing that wants to in­ter­rupt me. Man­age pri­or­it­ies, not in­ter­rupts. Fo­cus, don’t juggle.

Email and mes­saging alerts are ex­actly the op­pos­ite philo­sophy. When you have alerts on, you are say­ing that whatever ran­dom thing that is com­ing at you in email is more im­port­ant than the thing you are cur­rently do­ing. You are will­ing to be in­ter­rup­ted at any time. Wow.

So, when I see someone with email alerts on - wheth­er they are pro­ject­ing in a meet­ing or just sit­ting at their desk - I con­clude: “this per­son doesn’t fo­cus”.

I real­ize people will ar­gue with this. Let’s see…. if you have email alerts on…… maybe you don’t know how to turn them off. Ok, that’s eas­ily fixed. (In Win­dows Out­look: File -> Op­tions -> Mail -> Mes­sage Ar­rival -> un-check everything.)

… maybe you want to know when you have new email… Folks, we live in the In­ter­net era. Let’s just as­sume that you AL­WAYS have new email. If you don’t, the email sys­tem is prob­ably broken.

… maybe you feel like you are al­ways “on call” for emer­gen­cies, or al­ways have to reply to email im­me­di­ately. That is ab­so­lutely true for some jobs. Ser­vice desks, ad­min­is­trat­ive sup­port at cer­tain times, call cen­ters… places where you are fo­cused on emer­gency man­age­ment and sup­port. These folks, when work­ing in that mode, are not the ones I’m talk­ing about here.

The ma­jor­ity of jobs, how­ever, have very few reg­u­lar emer­gen­cies that re­quire them to be pay­ing at­ten­tion to email all the time. “Timely” re­sponse is fine. “Im­me­di­ate” re­sponse is not re­quired. If it’s an emer­gency, someone will call or text you.

… maybe you have trained your­self to ig­nore in­ter­rup­tions on the screen. Why would you do this? They’re still dis­trac­tions.

My the­ory: most people have email alerts on be­cause (a) of the en­dorph­in rush of “I have new mail!” and “I replied to that!” and (b) it’s just easi­er to live in a world where you are in re­sponse mode than hav­ing the dis­cip­line to fo­cus. Then they jus­ti­fy it by say­ing they’re only keep­ing an eye out for “im­port­ant” email.

And when they do that, they’re say­ing that what they are do­ing at any time is po­ten­tially less im­port­ant than any ran­dom new thing com­ing to them via email. Think about it.

Clueless presenter

The second con­clu­sion I reach is: “This per­son does not think about pub­lic per­cep­tion or fo­cus­ing the at­ten­tion of oth­ers.”

Be­fore I pro­ject any­thing from my laptop, I:

• Shut down nearly every pro­gram I have run­ning that isn’t the pro­jec­tion soft­ware.
• Make sure any folders I have open aren’t show­ing files I don’t want dis­played. In­clud­ing my desktop.
• Dis­able the net­work, un­less I will need it dur­ing the present­a­tion.
• If it’s a ser­i­ous present­a­tion, I ditch my phone, empty my pock­ets, and, uh, check my but­tons.

First, I don’t want to have dis­trac­tions dur­ing the time I’m present­ing. I don’t want net­work popups or se­cur­ity alerts in­ter­rupt­ing the meet­ing… those dis­trac­tions in­ter­rupt the flow of the meet­ing and waste every­one’s time.

Second, I’ve got too much stuff in my email and in my folders that is busi­ness sens­it­ive in vari­ous ways. I don’t want those things in­ad­vert­ently shared. Per­son­nel ac­tions, busi­ness de­cisions, meet­ing notes, thoughts that are still in early draft… this stuff typ­ic­ally should not be dis­played to groups oth­er than those who are par­ti­cip­at­ing in that con­ver­sa­tion.

When people aren’t mak­ing those de­cisions be­fore dis­play­ing their laptop screens, it seems clear that they aren’t think­ing about ef­fi­cient meet­ings, pro­tect­ing in­form­a­tion, or send­ing the wrong mes­sages about how they come across in pub­lic.

Those are the two con­clu­sions I reach, in a mi­cro­second, when I see an email alert pop up on a dis­played screen. Maybe it’s un­fair, maybe I’m wrong - but that’s what I see.

Alternatives

So… what do I sug­gest in­stead? Usu­ally, my tend­ency is to make an ob­ser­va­tion, and then, rather than mak­ing spe­cif­ic re­com­mend­a­tions, to let people draw their own con­clu­sions about what to do. This lets me see what sorts of de­cisions they make… (Which, ad­mit­tedly, might also be a little bit evil.)

But in this case, since I’m tak­ing a strong stance, I’ll con­clude with a few re­com­mend­a­tions:

Ob­vi­ously: turn off your email alerts. Forever. On every device, in every sys­tem. Be de­lib­er­ate in how you in­ter­act with email. Set aside times to pro­cess it rather than be­ing con­tinu­ously in­ter­rup­ted by it through­out your day (and night).

If you really are in a mode where you have to mon­it­or email very reg­u­larly, think about how best do that in a way that still al­lows you to have real fo­cus time.

Be de­lib­er­ate about when you are on a mes­saging plat­form, and about how it in­ter­rupts you. Think about what you have run­ning on your laptop be­fore you dis­play it in a meet­ing or video con­fer­ence.

Of course, this isn’t really about email. It’s about be­ing more ef­fect­ive in your work, which is a lot more im­port­ant than all that email.

-r’m