by Marsha Egan
http://EganEmailSolutions.com/inboxweek.html
©
2010
Email Noodling?!!! Watzzat? Chances are, you know exactly
what it is, although you may not recognize the name... We call it E-Noodling,
for short.
Email Noodling is the pervasive and time wasting
practice of looking at all the subjects in your inbox, scrolling up and down,
opening one every here and there, closing them without working on them, marking
them unread" to make sure you read them again, scrolling up and down some
more, lamenting about all the work you have to do, then getting up and going for
a cup of coffee.
We've all done it. Most of us still do
it.
It is a habit that has evolved with the growing use
of email. It costs organizations and you a ton... in lost or misused productivity,
and perhaps even stress.
Prior to the advent of email, our
work and projects were delivered to us by mail or by voice. We received US Postal
mail once a day, and company delivered mail only a few times daily. And it wasn't
that much. Our bosses and colleagues may have also delivered to do's for the task
list by phone, personally or in meetings. Most of us remember the day when we
actually planned our work, and felt good about the numerous things we accomplished
each day.
Enter email. In addition to all of the sources
listed above, the free convenient email delivery system has just added a minimum
of 30-50 more tasks to the average worker each day. Even though there may be some
spam in there, it is still a task.
The clincher is, because
there is so much email, and the inbox is right there staring you in the face,
most people leave a majority of the delivered messages in their inbox. So even
if you clear out 20 of those 30 emails daily, over ten days, you can have 100
items hanging in that inbox. Yikes.
Then what do you do
with all those items?!! You "e-noodle."
You search
and sort, answer a few, file a few, delete a few. You re-sort, hoping you'll be
able to delete 10 at once. You look at all those items, get exasperated, and get
up and take a walk!
The challenge with e-noodling is that
most people confuse activity with results. They are drawn to knocking off items,
rather than working on the most important priority. Give me just 10 minutes, and
I'll clear out 30 pieces of mail. Soon that 10 minutes grows, and you get entangled
in the task related to one of the items, while you were just trying to clear it
out, and oops, you've just started working on a not so important item. Confusing
activity with results.
Occasional e-noodling is ok. We all
do it. Sometimes we need those mindless times of the day to stare into space or
e-noodle.
The biggest challenge about e-noodling is that
people are engraining e-noodling as a habit. It has become the way they handle
their email, and has become a big part of how they manage (or should we say mis-manage?)
their time and their work.
It is reactive, and, done habitually,
it can become extremely unproductive and stressful. The cost is not only in the
time spent e-noodling, but in the resultant time spent working on the items that
are no where near the top of your priority list, and ultimately the stress related
to not getting the "right" stuff done.
The cure?
Empty out that inbox. Move those emails to another holding place that allows YOU
to decide the priority rather than getting romanced into working on the wrong
stuff. Avoid skimming subject lines in hopes of clearing out a few items. Work
your email from the top down, consistently. Stop surfing. Focus.
And
to get there, you'll need to e-noodle one more LONG time. E-noodle until every
item -- every item--is out of the inbox. Then keep that inbox clean. And start
managing and enjoying your e-noodle-less life again.
