Managing Yourself by Managing Your Time

One of my goals for our ITSS leadership work is to manage my time better.  I think I have always been fairly good at this.  I have a regular habit of spending my first hour of the morning planning and reviewing my calendar.  When I attend leadership training two years ago, I learned to schedule time in my calendar to work on big projects that require concentration and careful thought.  I also schedule time weekly to work on leadership, either by reading key articles, reviewing past training materials, or just thinking about what's important.

Despite all this, I will admit to being an email junkie.  Although I've tried, and will continue trying, to reduce my attention to email, this is a real challenge to me.  Even my first hour of the morning includes some email.

Here are a few resources I've found on this topic:

• The War on Interruptions, by Chip and Dan Heath
• Too Much Information, by Schumpeter
• Never Check Email in the Morning, and Other Unexpected Strategies for Making Your Work Life Work, by Julie Morgenstern

Now I have to admit that I haven't yet read the book by Julie Morgenstern, although I did enjoy the video on this page.  However, I have contemplated the title of the book and what it might mean for me.  And I have come to the conclusion that, at least for now, I'm simply not going to quit reading email in the morning. 

Here is my rationale, or maybe my rationalization, for this decision:

• A big part of my job is communication, and I often use email to do this.
• I organize many of my tasks with labels in email, so to work on a project, I want to review these emails.
• I want to be responsive to those who make requests, or provide information, via email.

So given that I'm not giving up on email in the morning, what will I try?

• Reduce time in the inbox.  Given that I do label things, if I want to work on a project, move to the emails with that label and try to stay there.  Don't quit flipping back to the inbox and get distracted by new messages.
• Put big jobs on my to-do list and file emails away.  Even if there is still work to be done, I can remind myself of this with my to-do entry and avoid getting distracted by seeing the email in my inbox.
• Work on extending the time between trips to the inbox.  Here is where the big distractions lie, along with the tendency to try to multi-process.  I've read that humans aren't really very good at multi-processing, and I've come to believe that for myself.  I'm working on doing one thing at a time.

I hope some of these ideas might resonate with those of you reading this blog.  If so, I invite you to comment.