Can you honestly say that every minute of your working day is spent productively?

Taking lunch and coffee breaks out of the equation, how do you really spend your “working” time?

If most of your day is spent managing email – and dealing with overload, irrelevant traffic and unnecessary copies – then you are not alone. If this is the case then you will almost certainly not be productive, you will definitely be stressed and – more than likely – you will feel unhappy.

According to a City AM report, the average British worker spends 36 (36!) days per year just writing emails – which based on a 71/2 hour day means that each person spends just over one hour composing emails.

Now add reading the unnecessary emails, deleting the irrelevant emails, reading the copied email (that you should not have been sent in the first place) forwarding the emails for your colleagues, managers or associates to deal with and you have probably another hour or two of working time that is fundamentally unproductive.

It’s the productivity equivalent of pushing unwanted and un-eaten mushy peas round your school dinner plate – an activity that takes up your time, adds nothing nutritionally and all you end up with is a pile of uneaten peas – which are now cold.

To avoid a pile of cold peas just learn to get back in control of your email. Get some email training, learn how to use your email package features to automate many of the daily tasks, turn off your email alerts to avoid unwanted interruptions and start to get back to actually doing your job.