Am I too busy?

How often do I hear this being said? So are we busy or busy fools?
If you don’t know how to utilise your time and resources well, the chances are you’re not getting much work done (sorry if the truth hurts!).
Don’t stress, help is here, we have a variety of tools and techniques you can take advantage of to boost productivity.

Checking E-mail

For a lot of people, checking email is almost as common and frequent as breathing. It can be a hard habit to break. Having email constantly in the back of our minds, can take your concentration away like nothing else.
There are a lot of different techniques for minimising email’s drain on your focus, but the best one and probably the hardest one to get used to is,

Don’t check your email in the morning!

Don’t do it. Studies show that the most productive time of the day is the few hours after you first wake up. Your energy is at an all-day high. Your creativity is soaring and most of us waste that time checking our inboxes.
So, if you only do one thing after reading this post, try email-free mornings for a week. If you can’t pull it off, scan your email for two minutes to look for genuinely urgent notes and then close it for the remainder of the morning in favour of some more creative or productive work.
In addition to developing this new routine, these two tools can help you tame your email.

Gmail Tabs

The world isn’t exactly a fan of Gmail’s new tabbing system for its inbox, but if you’re a Gmail user, it’s not a bad way to quickly sort and move through your messages.
To set up tabs so you can separate personal emails from promotional ones, click on the settings gear in the right corner of your inbox, go to Settings, and then select the tabs you’d like.

Signals

Part of the wasted time in email is in checking to see if someone has responded to you. Signals is a free Google Chrome add-on that gives you real-time notifications when someone has opened an important email you’ve sent.
Signals saves you from having to write unnecessary follow-up emails like: “Just checking to see if you got my last email!”
If you use Microsoft Outlook or Gmail, you can turn on Signals to determine when contacts open and interact with your email, then tailor your timing and responses to match.
I would love to hear your comments on this article, as well as sharing any ideas, tips, tricks or tools you use to keep focused.
All the best!
Neil Brewster