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Speaker 1: Welcome to How I Work, a show about the tactics

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Speaker 1: used by leading innovators to get so much out of

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Speaker 1: their day. I'm your host, doctor Amantha Yimba. I'm an

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Speaker 1: organizational psychologist, the CEO of Inventium, and I'm obsessed with

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Speaker 1: finding ways to optimize my work day. Today's show is

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Speaker 1: another mini episode where I share some interesting research about

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Speaker 1: how you might be able to improve the way you work. Now,

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Speaker 1: to start with, I have a confession to make. I

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Speaker 1: love checking email. I love how productive I feel smashing

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Speaker 1: through hundreds of emails in a single hour. I feel efficient,

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Speaker 1: and I feel like I'm getting things done. But here's

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Speaker 1: the thing. I used to be an email addict. I

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Speaker 1: used to check email constantly throughout the day. It would

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Speaker 1: happen when I was writing an article and I reached

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Speaker 1: a stack point. It would happen when I was waiting

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Speaker 1: in line for a coffee, and it would happen when

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Speaker 1: I was out for dinner with my husband. Now, while

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Speaker 1: you might scoff at this, I know that I'm not alone.

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Speaker 1: Research published in Harvard Business Review revealed that sixty percent

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Speaker 1: of workers spent less than two hours per day disconnected

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Speaker 1: from email, and one in five people spent less than

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Speaker 1: thirty minutes disconnected. Now email gets a bad rap. People

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Speaker 1: complain that email is the biggest drain on their productivity,

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Speaker 1: and certainly it used to be a big drain on

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Speaker 1: my productivity. But it's only bad because of the mindless

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Speaker 1: way most people approach their inbox. Instead of checking email

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Speaker 1: willy nilly throughout the day, we need to approach our

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Speaker 1: inbox strategically. We need to utilize our inbox for its strengths,

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Speaker 1: not its weaknesses. So the best thing about our inbox,

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Speaker 1: which can equally be sent as the worst thing, is

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Speaker 1: that once we enter it, the rewards center in our

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Speaker 1: brain is lighting up like crazy. So because of the

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Speaker 1: inbuilt addictive design of email checking with the random presentation

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Speaker 1: of good or at least interesting bits of news, use

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Speaker 1: for most people it is energizing and gives us a

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Speaker 1: dopamine hit. We feel super productive responding and then deleting

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Speaker 1: or archiving emails, and it generally doesn't require all that

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Speaker 1: much brain power, which means email is the ideal activity

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Speaker 1: for when your brain is at its least sharp, which

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Speaker 1: tends to be early to mid afternoon. As a psychologist

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Speaker 1: understanding the psychology behind the addictive nature of email helped

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Speaker 1: me overcome my addiction, and I also deleted the email

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Speaker 1: app from my phone, which helped a lot too. I

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Speaker 1: now keep my email closed until lunchtime, or at least

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Speaker 1: until I've completed my most important tasks for the day,

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Speaker 1: but on an ideal day, I wait until around two

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Speaker 1: pm to check my inbox because it's an effective way

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Speaker 1: to re energize myself from a post lunch dip. So

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Speaker 1: by checking emails when my energy levels are at their lowest,

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Speaker 1: email acts as a pick me up and gets my

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Speaker 1: brain firing through lighting up the reward centers for me.

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Speaker 1: I'll sometimes even put this meeting with my inbox in

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Speaker 1: my diary. I'll block out a thirty minute chunk of

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Speaker 1: time at about two o'clock, and I also set my

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Speaker 1: timer two to make sure I don't get sucked into

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Speaker 1: an email black hole. I'll often start by creating a

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Speaker 1: few quick wins. I do this by spending the first

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Speaker 1: minute or two deleting all subscriptions and emails I was

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Speaker 1: ce seed on but didn't actually need to be see

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Speaker 1: seed on. This is particularly great at triggering the reward

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Speaker 1: center of the brain through making a ton of progress

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Speaker 1: in a short space of time. The next thing I

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Speaker 1: do is respond to the emails where I can have

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Speaker 1: the biggest impact, and then I go through the rest

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Speaker 1: until my timer goes off. I've personally found that changing

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Speaker 1: my email behavior has been one of the most difficult

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Speaker 1: things to shift, But once I did start to change

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Speaker 1: this behavior, it's freed up so much extra time in

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Speaker 1: my day to work on projects that matter much more

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Speaker 1: than responding to emails. Hey. There, that's it for today's episode.

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Speaker 1: If you liked it, there are plenty of others that

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Speaker 1: you might also enjoy, such as my chat with Matt Mully,

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Speaker 1: co founder of WordPress, where we talk about how he

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Speaker 1: organizes his phone to create healthy habits, and my conversation

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Speaker 1: with Adam Grant, where we talk about the two things

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Speaker 1: he does at the start of every week to make

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Speaker 1: sure he stays on track with what really matters. Finally,

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Speaker 1: it's great getting feedback from listeners such as yourself, so

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Speaker 1: feel free to give this podcast a review in iTunes

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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you

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Speaker 1: like this episode, make sure you hit the subscribe button

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Speaker 1: so you can be alerted when new episodes are released.

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Speaker 1: See you next time,