The best, easiest and most under-utilised energy management tool

Neuroscience tells us that it’s virtually impossible to multi-task and yet whenever you step into meetings or have team offsites, it appears that most people can’t wait for a break to check their emails. Or worse, many are checking while in the meeting or conference session.

It’s virtually impossible to be fully present if you are worried about emails. And many people perpetuate the expectation that they will respond quickly by…..well….constantly responding to emails. And so the cycles continues.

Solution – use your out of office responder on your email………

This helps to manage the expectation that you will get back to people immediately and allows you to be more realistic as to when people should expect a response.

Of course it’s always important to give people a way to find you urgently for example offer that they can text you or offer the contact details of a colleague who can help in your absence.

And while it’s great that we all feel important when we get emails, let’s face it, unless you work in the medical profession, the query probably isn’t as urgent as you would like to think it is.

Some very efficient people have their responder on all the time and indicate that they only access emails at certain times of the day. This is especially good for people who are slower paced and need to spend longer time on tasks without getting distracted by email.

How you use your out of office responder is really up to you. The important thing is that you play around with what works for you and chances are you will feel more present and productive when you start to use this powerful tool.

We would love to hear how you use your out of office responder to increase your performance and energy management………

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