Change One Habit and Change Your Productivity Ten Fold.

Have you ever heard in sales, when you get the opportunity to “interrupt the search,” you must do so?! Well, it is true. There’s never going to be a lead hotter than when they contact you or fill out a form. Getting them right away can show them they don’t need to keep searching for X product/service/company. YOU are here to serve them!
But on the other side of the coin, I am curious, do you check your email as soon as you get the ‘ding’? If you check your inbox frequently, this post is for you!

When is being committed to interrupting the search interrupting YOU?
According to sociologist Judy Wajcman, 70 percent of emails received read within six seconds of arrival in our inbox.
It’s like a dopamine hit to the brain. “Ooh! I have mail! I need to check it and see what it is!” It’s almost like an addiction, and I will admit I fell for this too. But, the good thing is that email attending is an addiction that you can break with a few habit changes. And trust me, you might not think you need to break the habit, but read on, and I will explain why this habit is costing you precious time and productivity.
Did you know if it takes you 1 minute to read that email, it will take you 10 minutes to ‘recover’ from the 1-minute interruption? So TEN times the length of the interruption is how long it will cost you to recover. I didn’t make that statistic up. It comes directly from Jonathan Spira, a researcher and industry analyst known for his work in collaboration and knowledge sharing and the problem of information overload.
So what does this mean when it comes to your lightning-speed-email-checking skills? Well, let’s do the math:
If every hour you check your email four times (every 15 minutes) and each email check takes 30 seconds, which means you are in your email for 2 minutes per hour. But the recovery time is 10x this number- which is 20 minutes every hour. If you work 8 hours a day, that’s almost THREE hours of your day distracted. Do I have your attention yet?
I know what you might be thinking: “Aaron, I’m an expert email checker! I don’t get distracted for ten times the length of my email checking! I’m better than that!” I’m sorry to break it to you; you’re not. This statistic is valid for all of us. You, me, your sales team, your co-workers. Don’t you think you’d work better and wiser if you were less distracted? Why not be the best you can be and live up to your potential, distraction-free instead of allowing distractions to suck the creativity and ability right out of you? You can be attentive AND less distracted. You can have nearly 30% more time to get work done and be your best.
How?

1. Turn off email notifications on all your devices. Turning it off takes that vibrate or sound from your phone/computer that you’re so used to jumping to and shuts it down cold turkey.
2. Check email only at pre-arranged times. At the beginning of this new habit changer, you will likely want to check it once an hour or more. But you’ll soon see that pre-arranged times help you focus and use the right energy to be more productive, not distracted like you were before. Set an alarm for the specific times, if it helps.
3. Keep up with “interrupting the search”. You CAN turn notifications on for a specific type of email. For example, I know all my leads come from a particular online form-all of which come to me from a single email address from my lead capture page. I also have colleagues that use a system that will dispatch leads using the same email address. If you have a business partner or VIP client, turn on a new, unique sound just for these people. You don’t need to look at all the other emails that can wait for the designated time you set up. One other option is to have an email address just for your leads/VIPs. Let yourself attend to these instantly if you must, but use the inbox where you communicate internally or with customers hourly instead of immediately.
   FOMO is real. If you have FOMO when it comes to email, it’s time to try these tips. There is no reason you must check email the instant it comes in. Sure, it feels good to have 0 new messages, to know everything is “done,” but that instant answering harms your ability to be your best and get all of your work done. You will survive checking your email eight times per day instead of 32 or more. And you will soon be in disbelief you once were shackled to the ding of “you got mail.”
   I challenge you to start this new habit right now. Then, let me know how it goes. My prediction is you’ll have almost 30% more of your day back!
   My secret is out! You can interrupt the search AND stop interrupting yourself. It just takes a little self-awareness and conscious effort.
   Success is a choice!