I set an alarm to wake up in the morning, but it rarely goes off since my internal clock always wakes me up about fifteen minutes before the scheduled time. On the few days it does beep in my ear, my day usually doesn’t start out calmly because I’ve learned to rely on the extra fifteen minutes. I become rushed and stressed, and find that this mentality carries over into the rest of the day.

I’ve watched colleagues rush through the door late for work (every morning!) while carrying a bag of donuts or a cup of coffee. Although I understand that breakfast is considered the most important meal of the day, I personally wondered about the decision to make the extra stop if they knew they were close to their start time and would most likely be late. But let’s not harp on that. The important thing to focus on is that this rushed and harried feeling sets the tone for each of us, and influences how clearly we think, how productive we are, and yes, our organizational skills for the rest of the day.

As king of the obvious, I want you to get up earlier—base the new time on how it fits in your schedule, but buy at least fifteen minutes of fluff time. If it means going to bed earlier, then work that piece into your overall schedule as well. Give yourself some breathing room before your shift or day starts so that you aren’t rushed. Try to set a calming tone to your day. For those individuals who like to play games with themselves by setting a clock or watch earlier or later, I recommend
against it. Besides the fact that you’re no longer synchronized with the rest of the people in your time zone, you’re actually self-initiating stress as you are constantly converting to the real time.

It’s important to start our day right with an easy wake-up and plenty of time to get ready. Our starting attitudes and productivity as we calmly walk through the door with plenty of time to spare will send positive messages to your brain that you intend to handle the day in a fully capable manner!

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

According to bizcommunity.com, 306 billion emails are sent each day, with about seventy-five percent estimated to be spam according to the Radicati Group (2020). Getting through the seventy-five percent, plus the twenty-five percent you need for actual work, takes up valuable time. I read an article recently that stated about 30% of employees have over 1,000 emails in their inbox at any given time while another article mentioned that emails have increased 5% since the pandemic.

Now, imagine that every time you receive a new message, a bell sounds or a preview notice of incoming mail comes into view. When that happens,
it grabs your attention and starts to pull you toward multitasking. We live in a very reactive work environment now. Sending and receiving
emails has made us slaves to this form of communication, and keeps us leashed to whatever device gets us that information. Take back control
and be proactive in dealing with ancillary email impacts. Let’s start to implement concrete email strategies.

• Block off and dedicate time to manage your email. Whether you do it in the morning, before lunch, late afternoon, or all of the above, you should have dedicated time for it and not take
them on one at a time, throughout the day.
• Ignore new messages. Rather than behaving like Pavlov’s dog and responding to every bell that rings telling you that “You have mail,” become proactive and take control of when you
choose to spend time reading email.
• Deal with it one time. Remember to touch an email once. Take action on the emails such as moving it to another location or scheduling a meeting or a phone call, but don’t read it and keep
it there. This causes you to read it multiple times.
• Resist the immediate temptation to grab your smart phone. Don’t read emails immediately when you wake up. This will create an instant heavy workload and frustrated state of mind. Give yourself a chance to adjust to your day prior to checking your email.
• Turn off the feature that confirms you have a new email or provides a preview; you don’t want the distraction of knowing that an email came in. If you’re blocking off time and have set
expectations with those you work with, you don’t need these features.
• Avoid unnecessary ‘thank you’ emails. They often create an avalanche of somewhat meaningless emails that go back and forth. If it is truly worthy, call or write a heartfelt note. In
my first six months at a new job, I had over thirteen hundred emails saying some version of thank you. There were some that were heartfelt, but there were others that were less sincere and
simply read “thx.” The emails caught my attention and forced me to stop what I was doing to delete them.
• Simplify your organization. I recommend against setting up auto-filtering to organize emails by categories, senders, etc. It creates the need to look in multiple places when researching or
looking for something. You should do your organizing through file management, since you get information from many sources, not just email. Build strong online file management systems to
assist in searching for pertinent material.

Taking a proactive, methodical, and strategic approach to email management will allow you to take back your day and become a more productive professional.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

There was a peer of mine whom I would often call and have to leave messages. She would never return my calls. As soon as I sent her an instant message, she was prompt with her communication and we were always able to get things done. By tailoring our communication styles to her preferences, we were both more efficient.

Who you’re communicating with, what you’re communicating, and how you’re communicating it will positively or negatively impact your time. Confidence, influencing others, persuasion skills, setting clear expectations, being clear and concise—all are tied to effective communication and time management. All are a must when it comes to being productive, not to mention building stronger relationships. If you sit in meetings that have consistently been a waste of time, are you confident enough to offer solutions to make them more effective, or strong enough to say they should be held less frequently, or even stopped altogether? Whether it is speaking up during the meeting or after it to let the host know, communication does drive
time management.

How effective are your listening skills? Are you truly paying attention and listening to people? Think back to the number of times when questions had to unnecessarily be addressed again because
one person wasn’t listening? Listening is another key component of communication and, again, time management.

I can’t state it enough: communication is an extremely important facet of effective time management. Assess your communication strategies, then go out and commit to and share best practices around communication and time management. Take time to:

• Understand communication preferences for those you work with the most. If you don’t know, then ask.
• Use the right channel based on priority. Is an email and instant message (IM) the right channel based on the urgency or expected actions? Don’t send an email to deal with fire drills
needing immediate attention—you can’t expect everyone to be on email at all times of the day. You might send an instant message to get someone’s attention, but you want to avoid
ping-ponging the message back and forth when details can be discussed quickly on the phone.
• Be conscientious of the audience when sending emails. Give summaries and highpoints, if necessary, and details to only those who really need them. It saves you time in writing and
other people’s time in reading. Also, be concise by not writing the email version of War and Peace to ask a simple question.
• Know who needs and wants to know. Don’t reply to everyone on the email distribution (reply all) unless it is truly needed and impacts all—it cuts down on potential unnecessary email
return responses.

Communication plays an important role when establishing priorities and making all of us conscientious about being productive and not wasting time. Looking at how you’ve chosen to communicate in the past and establishing new reliable strategies will enhance your efficiency.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

Have you ever been on a conference call and waited several minutes after the start time of the meeting to actually begin? What if each time a person joins late, the host stops and provides a catch-up summary? Is that fair to people who joined on time? How about meetings that extend beyond the scheduled end time with no regard for what anyone else may have scheduled next? I’ve been in all of the above, in each of these roles: on time, late, host, and guest.
As the host, I finally made a commitment to start the meeting on time and end on time. Commitment is a critical skill in time management. I
realized I needed to be more committed with several factors of my time management. By committing myself to building better habits, I found
that others started to practice similar techniques.

Understand your own commitment level. Be fully invested in improving your time management skills, and be respectful of others’ time, as well. Think of examples in which you must commit and start to create the right actions and habits. Here are some examples:

• Commit to start and end times you set for yourself. If you said you would spend an hour on a project, stick to that time. If you’re not done with a task, set up a new time to complete it.
• The same holds true as the host of a meeting. Start on time and end on time. In a meeting, you may want to say, “Out of respect for everyone’s time, we’re going to get started.” It’s not
always easy, but many times we enable the process. With every new late attendee who joins, we do a quick recap. As much as we want everyone on the same page, it makes the meeting
inefficient and is disrespectful to those who did join on time. You can offer to catch them up after the call or have them read the meeting minutes, but it’s important to try to limit the
constant recaps for the late arrivers.
• As the end of a meeting approaches, you may want to say, “I see we only have a few minutes remaining. We’ll end the meeting and cover the rest at the next meeting,” or set up a new time
to finish that works for everyone. Going beyond the end time has a downstream effect for many. Showing respect for other people’s calendars builds the right habits for everyone. Be
committed to making it happen.

Stay focused on doing what you set out to do, starting by sticking to what you allotted for time on your calendar. This will keep you on task, build a strong time management reputation for you, and ultimately save time for not only yourself, but others. Looking back at incidents when you let time drift or found yourself not committing to what you set out to do will provide you with a good snapshot of what needs to change and what new habits to establish.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

I have been involved in many meetings, especially conference calls, in which people were obviously not engaged. The disengaged population is often multitasking. Besides the people who readily admit that they are multitasking (you would be surprised at the number of people who come right out and tell me), there are the people who don’t say a word during the entire meeting, other than to say hello in the beginning and goodbye at the end. The multitaskers also are the obvious ones who say, “Huh?” or, “Can you please repeat the question?” when they hear their name directly. Some are bold enough to say, “Johnny and I were just instant messaging and I didn’t catch all that.”

In 2009, Ryan Buxton referenced a new study from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that found multitasking may do more harm than good. Citing the study’s findings, the article states, “Multitaskers are more susceptible to memory interference by irrelevant details.” The effort to move from one topic to another and the exertion required to return where you were impacts the true retention of information for multitaskers. What does this have to do with time management? Everything. Anything that takes your concentration away from the present will create extra work for you. Stop kidding
yourself by thinking that multitasking saves time. It actually does the opposite.

I recently saw a presenter request the audience to write out their first name and last name. He asked them to write out the first letter of their first name followed by the first letter of their last name, and so on. It obviously took much longer than simply writing their names out normally. The point was powerful.

Start an exercise over the next three days at work. I want it to be based on true experiential facts, not by looking at the past and creating a time study—you want facts, not subjectivity. Start to monitor the number of times that you try to multitask in a day. By being conscientious of it, you will reduce the pull to do it. Mark down the number of attempts, even if you went back to concentrating on the first item. The goal is to improve this by ten percent each day.

I won’t be a hypocrite and say that I have never done it. However, since I’ve limited my multitasking, I have found myself asking What just happened? in a meeting much less frequently than I had in the past. Additionally, I will say that my concentration level and my engagement has grown substantially since I made a concerted effort to concentrate on one task, one meeting, and one conversation at a time. A conversation that only needs to happen once—thus saving everyone time.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

In an ironic twist on the previous blog, I want to share the power of mindless checklists. As I was packing for a summer vacation, I was scrambling around and getting stressed over whether or not I was forgetting something. As I was digging through my junk drawer, in the back of a notebook I found last year’s list. There it was; everything I needed to bring—including a swimsuit, sunscreen, and sunglasses.

The burdensome task of packing turned from a budding stressful situation to a quick to-do. I have since made a winter vacation list, and a
business trip list. Each of the lists has matured and changed over time, but the basics remain the same. Routines—or doing the same thing
over again with predictability—can make you a better organizer and time manager if they enhance your productivity and reduce your stress
levels.

Determine what checklists and routines personally and professionally can work for you. Are there standard operating procedures that need to be made up? Are there morning opening or closing tasks that can be made holistic and easier for you to follow? What regular reference points or routines can you establish and create both personally and professionally? You might even want to establish a routine to have time each week, or even daily, for no electronic disruptions so that you can commit to doing nothing but what is in front of you. To put the last blogs to work, you can have an appointment for today to review the specific checklist that will be used (e.g., “Use packing list to pack for vacation”).

Checklists and routines reduce unpredictability and consistently let everyone know ahead of time what is expected. If it’s a standing meeting or a common task that makes you more productive and reduces unnecessary stress, then checklists and routines can and should be implemented.
Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

I used to work with an individual who carried her calendar with her everywhere. Within the calendar was her personal checklist for the day. Each morning, I would see her flipping the pages back and forth from yesterday to today and transferring the items not finished yesterday to the new day. After several days of watching her do this, I finally asked her two questions: First, how long does it take each day to transfer the new items over? Second, how important were the tasks in the first place if they kept getting moved? The answers were, that it took longer than she liked and the tasks transferred each day were probably not as important as she had originally thought. She was hurting her ability to manage time effectively in an attempt to organize each day.

The use of checklists always starts with the best intentions. Unfortunately, people often like to see them to check off their completed items and turn it into an accomplishments list. Checklists shouldn’t be used as an accomplishments list to tick off the little victories, or as an exercise in procrastination. Checklists should be used to drive execution of the tasks, but too often we start to migrate to the easier and quicker tasks. If you want an accomplishments list, then keep one, but don’t combine it with your checklist. A checklist should be about getting things done. On it should be all items needing to be addressed today: important, not important, urgent, and not urgent. It should be a complete list dedicated to today.

Assess your own checklist usage. Whether it is a literal checklist or a figurative set of tasks that you keep online, take the time to understand how often you move tasks regularly. You should stop using a checklist if you constantly shift tasks from day to day—this isn’t productive. Consider the following when conducting your assessment, some of which is reinforcement of past blogs:
• If you have moved a task for consecutive days, you must ask yourself, “How important is it?” If it is important, take action on it. If it is important but not urgent, don’t schedule it for tomorrow, schedule it for a week from now, when you know you can get to it.
• If you are proactively staying ahead of your day, week, and month as stated in an earlier chapter, then you should be on top of this and simply be making tweaks along the way.
• Checklists, if kept, must be comprised of the least amount of work you expect to get done and still consider the day a success. Specifically, this is the “I can’t leave until this gets done” list. Be
very realistic.
• Build in daily events and habits. What do you do at eight a.m. every morning? Are there calls you have to return, administrative tasks that need to be done (e.g., paperwork to process)? If so,
build it in. Account for the time you are using.

When it comes to checklists, the important key is to not write it down or add it to your online to-do list today if you are not going to do it today. Your checklist assessment should enable you to turn a potential time management hindrance into a time management tool.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

To use a sports analogy, if you run with a ball on your own from point A to point B, it will take you longer than simply kicking it or throwing it to another person already at point B. We try to do too much on our own. Whether we want all the glory, think we can do it better, or simply just want it done, there is value in getting others involved. This chapter isn’t about dumping, or even
delegating. It’s about teamwork. Depending on your position, you may still have to supervise, validate the work, or make sure it gets done, but you should find opportunities to avoid doing everything on your own.

Think about the expertise you have surrounding you. Do you have the right people working on the right tasks? Start to keep a list of contacts with their specific expertise so that you can quickly
reference it. If you are part of a team effort, schedule time with your peers or co-workers, particularly if you’re all depending on each other’s contributions. The benefit of a routine get-together is that it allows people to obtain consolidated information in one sitting as opposed to communications going back and forth with “reply all” emails that can take up valuable time.

It’s important to have a meaningful and added-value manner for people to get updates. If it’s not a meeting, at least create a consistent time each week for a progress summary with everyone’s contributions. The goal is to create a routine in which people know when and where updates and answers will be given, which reduces surprises and questions like, “Where do we stand on project A?” If you do set up a progress report email, be sensitive to the amount of time it’s taking everyone. You want meaningful content, but not time wasted for emails that go unread or administrative tasks that take away from actually completing the real work.

Once a routine meeting or progress report is established, clearly define roles and responsibilities. This will hold people, including you, accountable to meeting the deadlines and keeping people informed of status updates. Knowing who is doing what and when is a critical component of time management.

When dealing in team situations, it’s also important to divide and conquer. Not everyone needs to be at every meeting. Have someone who attended the meeting provide an update and any key deliverables to the collective group. Also, it’s important for you to schedule actual work time for yourself and/or sub-group to ensure time is not all spent in meetings relating to what is being asked of you. As for meetings taking up all of your day, you have the right and obligation, whether you are the organizer or not, to question when meetings have run their course and are no longer valuable. Don’t have meetings to set up meetings. Look to get rid of time-wasting tasks.

Understand the importance of working as a team. A group of people can get more done in less time than one person if the process and roles are managed well. It is obvious, but is not always done effectively.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

Investing time to do something ahead of time saves time. Few people invest the time to read all their emails all the way through. For the most part, I am one of the few. I’m often asked how I manage my time effectively. One critical way is that I don’t skim email—there’s too much risk of missing critical information or creating more work by asking questions that are answered within the text. I read them start to finish, including the attachments. The easy argument for why not to do this is information overload, or that we don’t have time. I agree. However, taken in the context of the touch-it-once principle I cited in the last chapter, this becomes more manageable.

I’ve learned that by staying ahead of my emails, I garner incremental time to invest in other places. I also avoid wasted time digging for answers on my own, because I know where and who to go to for information. If you don’t know, invest time to learn. It saves time when you know the go-to contacts to fix certain problems. Additionally, you aren’t wasting time asking people to resend information or asking questions that are answered later in the email that you chose not to read thoroughly.

Effective immediately, be the person who reads one-hundred percent of your emails from top to bottom, and invests time to read the attachments. There are often pre-determined assumptions that an email isn’t relevant, or even portions of an email aren’t relevant. However, reading it will allow you to make your own determination. If you find a pattern, you can decide to stop getting them or have a conversation with the senders about their messaging so it saves both of you time. Remember, you are attaining a competitive edge by gaining knowledge, while saving time because you may be becoming the subject-matter expert.

Next, you should schedule an hour once a week to learn another piece of your own business, take an online class, or meet with someone in another line of business. Another option is for you to dedicate this time to reading interesting articles or less urgent inbox items that come in during the week. You can insert the article right into the appointment for that dedicated time. This is your chance to be curious, learn from peers, and get lingering questions answered—all while saving future time.

When you become the go-to person and have the answers, you actually save time. We say we don’t have time. What we’re really saying is we’re not willing to find the time, to invest the time, to actually save time.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

I would like to expand on the comment made in the previous blog about managing your email inbox. I used to have a position as
business support manager for a large operation. I was privy to my manager’s inbox and was asked to periodically manage it for him. I
thought it was an easy enough task—until the first time I saw his inbox and realized there were over one-thousand emails. Many were read,
while many others were not. Some were important, others were not. Some were critical, with deadlines that had passed. I had some work to
do. The most critical point when dealing with email is to touch it once. As soon as you’ve chosen to allow yourself to read it or even preview it,
you must now do something with it. Leaving it in your inbox should not be an option. Learn to touch it once.

You can effectively manage your inbox with a few easy tips. I normally filter my inbox by time with the most recent on top. However, for this
exercise, start by filtering your inbox by “Subject” and keep only the most recent one if it’s a duplicate. Next, review for topics, subjects, or senders that come on a regular basis that you don’t ever read. If you can or want to, click on unsubscribe. If you feel there may be a need to reference it in the future but don’t read it often, establish a setting to send it directly to your trash, but know that you can get to it if you need to. Next, go through your current inbox and determine which emails have tasks or follow-up required. Make actual dates to work on them. Make appointments for following through by embedding or inserting the email into the calendar appointment. Email platforms with synchronized calendars will have tutorials or help if you need further details.

Read your emails once. Even if the email catches my eye as a preview, I have a rule of thumb to deal with it as soon as it’s seen. It already distracted me, so I should put it in its proper place. We only have a few choices in how to handle it: delete it, save it to another file for future reference, move it to an appointment to do something about it later, or address it now. Touch it once.

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

• Down the Chute: A Toboggan Tale (children’s book)
• Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
• Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
• Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
• The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
• From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
• The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com