What’s your biggest time-management challenge in the workplace? If it’s phone calls, emails, and/or texts, you’re not alone. A Hartford Funds poll found that 50% of financial advisors list these, as well as procrastination, as their workplace time challenges.
All our devices—the smartphones, laptops, tablets—are promoted as tools that can keep us connected. But if we’re not careful, they can do just the opposite by distracting us, from both our personal and business lives.
What’s the Cost of an Empty Inbox?
On average, it takes 25 minutes to refocus after a distraction such as answering a text or phone call.1 And how many of them do you receive throughout each day? All told, it’s estimated that workers spend approximately three hours each day managing their emails alone.* Addressing these tasks tends to be so distracting because we view them as urgent. When we see new messages, we feel obligated to address them immediately. In fact, the term “telepressure” was coined to describe this inescapable call of constant pings and dings in our lives.
This fixation on responding immediately actually causes additional stress in our lives since we must juggle it with our existing tasks and priorities. But in reality, these tasks are insignificant in comparison to the activities that move the needle, and detracting from time you should be spending on tasks that can improve your business.
