In my Productivity course, I explain the four parts of Distraction Management – Email being a big one of the four.
I show you how you can truly tame your emails, so you’re the dog and you wag your own tail, instead of email wagging you all day:
- Oooh – another email…
- Oh, I must reply to that now…
- I wonder who’s written to me now…
Once you’ve taken control of your Email, and you have discipline with your email, a question I get asked frequently is:
“If I don’t have my emails open all day, how do I avoid getting sucked back into my emails, when I just need to jump in and out to get one bit of information from my inbox to get a certain job done?”
The easy answer is:
a. use the search feature, and
b. more discipline
Though as an avid GMail user for my business, I’d have to look at my inbox before I got to the search box.
Even I struggled getting in and out cleanly to stay focused on the work that’d give me the best results for my time.
Until now.
I’ve just found a Google Chrome extension, called GMail Search.
You can get it free from the Chrome store.
I expect there’s one for Firefox too (but haven’t checked sorry).
If you’re not on Chrome or Firefox as your primary browser, that’s up to you, but I’d be strongly recommending you try them. I use both, but spend most of my time in Chrome.
Back to Gmail Search for Chrome.
I can now, in the Chrome search bar, type ‘gs’ before a term, and it’ll instantly search my gmail inbox. No need to look at my inbox, no need to get distracted when I want to get my prioritised work done.
I can get in and get out quickly, without distraction.
It’s already helped me get ahead even more this past week of using it, so I wanted to share it with you too
Let me know if this helps you, it’s always great to hear!
Bye for now
Jamie