A McKinsey survey found that the average worker spends 28% of their day — about 13 hours a week — reading, checking, or writing emails. Additionally, it takes employees about 16 minutes to refocus after being distracted.

Additionally, a survey of 2,000 enterprise workers conducted by AtTask and Harris Interactive found that employees only spend 45% of their time performing job duties. The employees reported that the two biggest time wasters were unproductive meetings (59%) and excessive emails (43%).

How can workers stop spending so much time on email and start spending more time on their job? Here are a few great tips:

1. Unsubscribe. Use a program like Unroll.me to get rid of all the unnecessary newsletters and notifications in your inbox. 

2. Turn Off Notifications. Your notifications will be very distracting and make it harder to concentrate. You want to make sure you check your messages when you want to, not when the app wants you to. 

3. Designate Times to Check Your Email. Instead of checking your email throughout the day, specify certain times a few times per day to set aside your other work and respond to the messages in your inbox. 

4. Only Respond to Important Messages. Answer emails that need to be responded to and ignore the rest for your email breaks. You can use software like AwayFind and SaneBox to notify you of urgent emails so that you can ignore the rest. 

5. Give short responses. Get straight to the point and don’t waste time by adding unnecessary detail. If you have a lot to say, you can conduct a phone call instead. 

6. Clear your inbox at the end of the day. By cleaning out your inbox, you won’t have to worry about unchecked messages tomorrow morning. Try using email management software for fun ways to clean out your inbox. Some can integrate right into your inbox and help you make the most of the time you spend on your emails.

Conclusion

Excessive email can be a major problem for companies and their workers. It’s easy to get overwhelmed as your inbox floods with unnecessary messages. By taking new approaches to stay on top of your work, you can therefore save yourself time and be more productive.

---