I went to a great 4A’s seminar last week called “Reinventing Account Management.” The speaker was Tim Williams from Ignition Consulting Group. He was great. After the seminar, I wrote down some highlights of a few of the best practices that I wanted to incorporate here at our firm. One of those best practices deals with something that all of us use everyday in both our work and personal life, which is email. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great communication tool, but what Mr. Williams went on to say is that it can also be a productivity killer for an agency or company.

A couple of fascinating facts that I learned:

– The average person checks their email 5o times per day.

– Only 10% of email that a person receives is important.

– 55% of email recipients read their email immediately–so it’s constantly interrupting other tasks a person is doing.

– Now the biggie–it takes the average person, who is checking email, 25 minutes to return to their original task. Wow, how do we get anything done other than responding or communicating through email?

So it’s time we manage our email–to allow us to better manage our time. And as you know, our time is a premium that we need to utilize efficiently and effectively. My goal is to check emails every one to two hours. Also, don’t be the person who checks email during meetings, whether they be internal or external. How can you be in the moment and effectively contribute to a meeting with that type of distraction? Enjoy the rest of your workday and be more productive!