Email as the new slot machine: stop underearning by constantly grazing your inbox

Recently I taught a class conquering underearning to a group of women in small businesses. We were talking about all the common ways women sometimes undersell themselves. Several of the women brought up time management. I’ve really pondered this, because time management wasn’t on my original list of “12 ways self-employed women undersell themselves.” However, if we can’t manage our time effectively and efficiently, we will underearn without a doubt! You simply can’t make the type of money you are truly worth if you fritter your time away on endless tasks that don’t really move your business foreword. My current favorite culprit: email.

We seem to treat our email like a giant slot machine. We are constantly checking it. Did something important or really cool pop into our in-box? Usually not. But sometimes! We are training ourselves just like those dogs we read about in our college psychology 101 courses. (Pavlov? Help me out here. That was a while ago!) We can’t seem to stop checking it!

Of course the darker side of email is that when we don’t check it, we feel like we fall behind. There will simply be more to sort through. I’m starting to read more and more articles on the time-sucking and energy sapping vortex that is email. I’ll share more answers with you as I play with various solutions. But there is one constant answer that really seems to work. Are you ready? Check your email only twice a day. And the most important thing of all- don’t check it first thing in the morning. Get something more important done first.

I hear the gasp. Many of us are trained to grab that cup of coffee and turn on the slot machine. But then we are thrown into reactive mode. We are immediately reacting to what comes in, letting our in-box dictate the most productive hours of our day. What if you were in charge of your time and not your in-box?

Case in point. The last thing I do each work day is create a fresh to-do list for the following day. I pick one task to work on in the morning. It is usually something that requires thought and uninterrupted time. (Neither of these works well in email land.) When I come in in the morning, this is the task that occupies my time while I drink my coffee. THEN I check my email. Right now it is 9am. I have been thinking about my blog and writing this post for about 30 minutes. I have not checked my email. I will dig through it at 10am and again at about 2pm. Now, I am not seeing clients today, so my schedule is different than client days. I have to adjust accordingly. But you get the point.

Most experts now say to turn your email off when you are not checking it. Stop grazing. And definitely turn off that pop-up window that shows you new email has arrived with the first alluring sentence. Turn off your email alerts. It will be there when you next check it.

Get something meaningful done. Stop letting the slot machine dictate your day.

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