There was a time when I would carry my mobile phone with me everywhere I would go. And I mean everywhere. In the restroom, in the pocket of my pants that hang on the door of the bathroom while I was taking a shower, next to my bed, anytime I would be in it, next to the pool on a towel when I was swimming, etc. Why?

Because I “needed to be ready for an emergency call, whenever it came”. Maybe my mom would call me, or maybe my girlfriend/wife would call, or customers need to be able to contact me in case of emergency. That life threatening emergency never came though.

It’s kind of the same with email. I kept my mail client open all the time, with visual and audible notifications when a new mail arrived. I even installed the Gmail notifier, to let me know if I got new mail at Gmail. All for the same reason.

I realized that, of all the mail I receive daily, there is usually only one per day that I really need to respond to. However, all the friend request mails from the social networking sites, the “forward this to 10 friends or more” mails and server log messages do pull my concentration off my work every time they are delivered to my mailbox. In total I spent an average of half an hour to an hour reading and following through no these kinds of messages. After that, the bigger problem is to get my focus back on my work.

As I’m working on my time management skills, I started getting rid of all factors that could influence my productivity. I now turn off my mail client during most of the day. I only process my mail twice a day: first around 8 in the morning, to check if there’s anything I need to add to my list of tasks for that day, and then again around 3 pm, to see if there are customer requests, or other important communication that need to be addressed before business hours are over. My social networks get my attention twice a week, in my free time.

My phone is still kept by my side during business hours or when I’m on the road. After that it just sits on my desk or is turned off before I go to bed.

Managing the time I spend on email and telephone calls proves to be an important part of time management. I get more done than I did previously.