It’s Ok to Check Email First Thing in the Morning

“Don’t check email first thing in the morning!”

If you have read a time management book or taken a productivity course in the last ten years or so, you have probably heard this advice.

Heck, this piece if advice is so ubiquitous that time management expert Julie Morgenstern re-released her best-selling, “Making Work Work” book under the new title, “Never Check Email in the Morning!”

Enter little old me. You know what I do every day, first thing in the morning? Yup, I check my email.

Clearly, this must make me the least productive man on earth, right? Wrong.

Don’t get me wrong; my productivity has some issues, but those issues have very little to do with the fact that I check email first thing in the morning. More on that in a moment…

The logic behind not checking email first thing in the morning is that if you do, you get immediately swept up in a cascade of people clamoring for your attention, and this pulls you away from the long term projects and truly important work that will grow your business and further your career.

Ok, I can see that. But here’s the problem: “Not checking email in the morning,” is a tactic. And it is a tactic that does not apply universally to all people. It didn’t to me…

For me, email was not a productivity killer for two reasons

1. Most of my emails are good things. Speaking inquiries, product sales notifications, letters from friends, etc. All things that make me feel good, not stressed or overwhelmed
2. My emails are usually not urgent. I rarely find myself in a situation where I receive an email that I need to immediately respond to. Most can wait a few hours, or even a few days.

All told, I am easily able to check my email in the morning, go through it pretty quickly, and set aside a few that need responding too later in the day (or email right then if they are quick). Then I can close out and move on to other things.

This did not make me super productive though. I had another, much bigger productivity problem: internet surfing.

Yes, I’ll admit it: I like surfing the internet. I like reading funny stuff, pop culture sites, news updates, informative articles, blogs on a variety of subjects, etc.

It’s a bit embarrassing to admit, but I am able to waste a lot of time. I had a routine where I would visit Digg.com and click through all the interesting articles. Then I would check out three or four of my favorite sites and read everything new and interesting there. By the time I was done with visiting all those sites (and clicking through the various internal links) enough time would have passed that I could go back to see what new stuff was on Digg. It was not uncommon for me to pass an hour just surfing around various sites

Some days I would waste an entire morning with this process, squeezing in maybe 30 minutes real work amongst the procrastination. I’m not proud of this, I’m just being honest with you…

That was my productivity killer, not email. This year I am undergoing a process to create new habits that will eliminate this problem (You can read about it in my Resolution #1: No More Resolutions! post).

I have to say, the plan is going quite well! I am getting more done during the morning than I ever have before. It’s not completely where I want it to be yet, but it’s waaaaay better than it was.

I am not telling you this as a way to convince you that, “Email is not the problem! Surfing is the problem!”

No, I am trying convince you that in order to maximize your own productivity, you need to find your own productivity sticking points and then take steps to remove them.

“Not checking email in the morning” is a tactic. The strategy is, “Focus on high priority activities first, before you get sucked in to low priority activities that consume your day.”

The tactic may or may not work for you. If email hijacks your day, then sure, employ the “no checking email” tactic. But I know quite a few people who would ruin their day – or even get fired – if they didn’t check their email when they got to work.

Strategies have a much greater chance of being universal. Then again, maybe not. If your most productive and creative time is right after lunch, or at 5PM, or after midnight, then you might be much better off doing low priority stuff like email first thing in the morning. You have to figure out what works best for you.

In my experience, people crave tactics. They want to know what to do and how to do it, and they often don’t care about the why at all. Unfortunately, tactics without strategies (i.e. “whats and hows” without “whys”) can lead you down a suboptimal – or even detrimental – path.

Don’t follow a plan simply because some expert says something like, “the key to being productive is to never check email in the morning.”

Think. Think about your style, your personality, your strengths and weaknesses. Then develop plans that leverage those strengths and minimize those weaknesses

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About

By Avish Parashar. As the world's only Motivational Improviser, Avish uses techniques from the world of improv comedy to engage, entertain, and educate audiences on ideas around change, creativity, and motivation. Connect with Avish on Google+

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