Email: Heaven or He**?

At the end of any given day I am amazed at how much was accomplished through the miracle of email. Final edits sent off to clients, quotes given, approval submitted, and happy stories shared with others. For the most part, email has provided us with a wonderful way to get the facts to and from each other with great speed and efficiency. We are getting more done than ever before.
Or are we? Because so much of what I do depends on people getting back to me before I can proceed, I need to check my email frequently. This is good and bad. I can get several things done at once and since sending an email only takes a minute or two, it is a minor disruption while I'm actually tucked into a writing project. The problem occurs when mingled in with the relevant emails I find a newsletter from my favourite writing guru. Oops, I find myself off reading and before I know it 15 minutes has passed by.

Although I am controlling myself much better these days, those little distractions disrupt my flow. In addition to the 'fun email' distractions, there are the myriad of back and forth emails when someone is trying to figure out a small detail of a job. When working out the details of a job, we could find ourselves going back and forth 20 times! Yesterday I decided to pick up the phone and within 10 minutes had three of the back and forth jobs figured out. As a bonus, it was pleasant actually chatting with someone and laughing about how much more efficient it is for us to have the conversation on the phone.

I guess I will continue my love/hate relationship with email. Now if only I could tame the demons that tempt me to click on that little envelope icon every 10 minutes or so!