It's Time to Stop Using Email as a To-Do List

When M.G. Siegler started mistreatment Gmail's task feature to convert his emails into a disruption list, he created a surprising discovery.

As several as fifty to seventy five % of the emails he received were truly to-dos from people.

Taken separately, every request was cheap. But, in combination, "this may be a nightmare," wrote the overall partner at GV, at one time referred to as Google Ventures. "There's no approach anyone may manage such a system while not defrayal the overwhelming majority of their day doing email."

This, in a very shell, captures the essence of the e-mail crisis that is geological process the productivity of firms across the world. Email has become thus entrenched in our business processes that a lot of staff resort to mistreatment their inbox as a daily disruption list -- an inclination thus common that email suppliers like Google and Microsoft have taken notice, adding task management options to assist create it easier. But, treating email as a task manager solely encourages staff to pay longer mistreatment associate degree inefficient tool that already consumes (and wastes) a disproportionate range of company hours. Consider:

• Employees pay up to forty % of their time reading internal emails.
• One in 5 data staff cite email as their biggest time sink.
• As much as eighty % of email traffic is "waste."
• Unnecessary emails value businesses associate degree calculable $650 billion a year in productivity.
• As analysis progressively demonstrates however email overload takes an excessive amount of energy, erodes concentration and elevates stress levels at work, the writing on the wall is clear: firms that wish to reclaim lost productivity got to scale back the e-mail load, stat. meaning removing everything from the inbox that does not got to be there -- beginning with the disruption list.

Why email makes a terrible task manager

Using email as a task manager is like employing a screwdriver to pound a nail. It will work, sort of, however it is the wrong tool for the task.

Although inextricably coupled, communication and task management square measure 2 separate things, argues scientist and author Alexandra Samuel. Mashing them along solely makes each additional cumbersome.

"If you are conflating email and task management, then the task of act -- reading and replying to your messages -- gets slowed down by all the emails you allow sitting in your inbox in order that you will not forget to handle them," she wrote in Harvard Business Review. "This approach conjointly makes managing your to-do-list problematic: after you got to quickly determine the correct task to require on next, nothing slows you down like diving into your inbox to scroll through previous messages."

Tracking tasks through email conjointly needs you to stay your email program running all day, gap the door for distractions. staff already check their email as usually as thirty six times associate degree hour. once every interruption, it takes a median of twenty three minutes to induce back to their original task. All of this back-and-forth switch ultimately hampers productivity by up to forty %.

"Emails, after all, square measure turbulent," says the big apple magazine author Jennifer Senior. "It takes startup energy to scan them; it takes energy to reorient and revive once we're came to the task we've left. Over the course of every week, the value are often measured in hours."

A better thanks to do disruption lists

Separating email from task management will materially have an effect on employees performance. whereas email overload depletes the energy of staff, truly finishing tasks energizes them -- case in purpose, we have a tendency to all apprehend those people that truly add things to a disruption list simply to be ready to cross them off! obtaining things done makes folks happier and additional engaged at work, and staff perform higher once they are ready to concentrate on the work they believe matters most.

An effective task management tool works together with communication tools like email and messengers to assist staff waste less time respondent emails and pay longer doing meaty work. and also the next generation of productivity tools can got to go a step any -- they will got to modify staff to manage all of their daily tasks in a very single place while not having to toggle between email and alternative tools. additionally, these tools can got to permit staff to finish tasks where they're operating -- on any device, company computer network or traveller. This not solely provides them with an easy work expertise, however conjointly provides them the liberty to keep out email distractions whenever they have to battle through their disruption list.

Effective task management is all regarding potency. Given email's burgeoning name as a vast time sink, it's obvious that this taxing communication tool is not the best resolution. Taking disruption lists out of email and putt them wherever staff square measure performing on a task helps minimize distractions, scale back the quantity of your time staff pay in their inboxes, and ultimately, improve productivity.