Three Ways To Take More Action
1. Set Aside A Specific Chunk Of Time For Consuming Info On The Internet
Wasting hour after hour of your valuable and irreplaceable time on activities that shouldn’t take up more than 30 minutes a day has to come to an end.
What I’m referring to is anything and everything on the Web that you do to consume information – reading emails and messages, checking Twitter, digg and Facebook, reading blogs, the news – everything!
Give yourself 30 minutes to an hour every day to do nothing but revel in it, take care of it, or however you look at it. However, once you’ve used up your allotted time, then you must not return to it at all until later in the day or evening, and only if you’ve managed to accomplish a number of other jobs.
Stop these things from taking over your life by putting them in their place!
Give up checking this stuff every 10 minutes. It will not only kill whatever momentum you might have built up, but chances are, the rest of the world isn’t going to sit at a standstill waiting for your next Twitter update.
2. Take Charge Of Your Inbox
A whole book could be written on the topic of managing email (there have been, many of them), but these would likely be the highlights:
Immediately answer any email that can be replied to quickly. Quickly means less than a couple minutes.
Keep your replies short when possible. Lose the ’small talk’ and get to the point (but maintain sincerity). As much as you don’t like writing lengthy emails, the person receiving one probably likes reading them a lot less.
Delete any emails you haven’t responded to after a month. Holding on to them does nothing but make you feel guilty every time you open your inbox. And guess what – guilt is a guaranteed action-killer, so by getting rid of the emails, you’ll be getting rid of the guilt too!
3. Stay Disconnected When You Work
This means, close your office door (use a Do Not Disturb sign if necessary), turn off your phone (you can do it, I know you can), and close your instant messaging program.
You must get momentum working for you, because once you work in a state of ‘flow’, you’re able to take action much more quickly, with much better results.
When working, make sure you eliminate all distractions!
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