I have many non technical friends, who sometimes become irritate because of too many information coming toward them through emails and messenger. They blame their computer and smart phone. I think this is a real problem of many of us. Many times when I try to concentrate and suddenly my phone pops up because of some notification. But that is not the fault of the device but fault of our system. If our system is not working we need to change that.

I always switch off email notifications in my desktop Outlook. I have my time when I check my email rather than being notified for every emails. May be all of them are not important to me. You can enable email notification for a particular person (manager) if you want. If anything urgent happen it will come to you automatically. You don’t need to check emails to know that. If there is any problem in your project then people will call you. Important things comes in own way. I also keep my phone in ‘don’t disturb’ mode at night and when I am working. All operating system has this feature built in.

1. Make your manager’s expectation clear that you are working and not checking your emails and messenger throughout the day.

2. Set your priority. For example phone call is my top priority followed by work email, work messenger and personal email.

3. Do not check email all the time. Set two times in a day and read your email and reply.

4. Try to follow zero inbox rule.

5. Create some email rules to get organized. For example create different folders for emails send to you and copy (CC) to you. Give priority to the emails which are send to you.

6. Don’t check emails and messenger in the morning. Do your actual work first. Check emails in the afternoon.

Lastly make some time to switch things off and take rest so that you can concentrate again in the next day.

The above steps may be don’t work for you. But take an idea from them and make your own system, so that you can work comfortably.

Arnab