Four bad habits you need to break when it comes to email

The more time you spend managing email messages, the less time you’ll have for treating patients, running your practice, or tending to your personal life. To reduce the intrusion of email into your daily work life, stop doing these four things, advises productivity consultant Matt Plummer:

1. Stop checking email so often. Instead, turn off email notifications so you aren’t distracted by them, and check your email only at a few scheduled times throughout the day, for example, at the start of your workday, after lunch, and at the end of your workday.

2. Stop leaving emails sitting in your inbox. After you have read an email, take action. Either delete it or move it out of your inbox and into a folder. The only folders you really need are one for emails that require further action and one for emails you might want to read later.

3. Stop manually searching for emails. If you need to find an important email you have already read, you can save time by using your email program’s search function instead of searching manually.

4. Stop reading and deleting irrelevant emails over and over again. If you know that emails from a certain company or other source are irrelevant, stop opening them and deleting them individually. Instead, unsubscribe from their lists or block them as spam.

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