The average professional spends 28% of their working time, checking emails, according to a McKinsey analysis and HBR.
For a modest calculation that would be at least 2 hours per day that business owners spend on checking, responding, and creating emails.
On average it’s reported that people check their emails every 37 minutes.
Additionally, it can take an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to their original task.
At Emilia Powell Virtual Assistants we find that most of our new clients come to us feeling like they are drowning in emails and are missing important things which causes them immense stress and overwhelm.
Beyond the time spent directly on emails, there are additional hidden costs. The minutes add up as people scroll through a busy inbox, file emails for future reference and check desktop or phone notifications.
These small actions contribute a lot of time throughout the day and can affect overall efficiency and motivation.
Here are some quick wins to help you reclaim some of the time you spend on emails, freeing up your time to focus on what you need to.
1. Schedule email time
Instead of checking your emails as and when, schedule intentional time throughout the day to check and process your emails. If people are used to you replying instantly, you could create an auto-responder that confirms how often/when you’ll be responding to emails.
And instead of checking every 37 minutes, try pushing that time to an hour to start with.
2. Simplify your inbox
Move emails out of your inbox once you have read them. Re-processing can take a lot of extra time and energy. Emilia has a really good hack for doing this, so reach out to ask her how you can efficiently get your inbox to zero.
3. Simplify your folders
In all the years we’ve worked with business owners, we’ve never seen anyone successfully use lots of folders and be able to find exactly what they are looking for, quicker than someone with 1-3 folders.
Again, Emilia has a great folder hack, so reach out to her to learn what she recommends.
4. Turn off notifications
Notifications are the devil’s work and can be incredibly successful in distracting you and wasting more of your time.
Turn notifications off and ideally work offline where you can, so you can claim back more of your time.
5. Outsource
If you need to be more reactive on your emails and want them managed efficiently, then reach out to an experienced VA who can help get your emails in order and give you hours per day back.
Get in touch with Emilia at emilia@emiliapowell.co.uk today, if you’d like to learn how you can reclaim your time and energy and ditch the email fear for 2024.