Handle Email or Watch A Movie

by Robertt Young

Last Saturday I travelled home from New York and observed several people around me on the airplane. They had their laptops open and were working during the two hour flight. The one thing that they all had in common- they were all checking, reading and doing who knows what with their email. I felt a little guilty as I watched a movie on my computer while these folks tried desperately to get out of email jail before they got home. It occurred to me that these people were just like so many in the business world today; taking every spare moment they have to catch up on their email. Watching this scene in the airplane reminded me of something we talk about in the Getting the EDGE workshop. “Small things done consistently in strategic places create major impact.” And depending on the small thing, this can either be positive or negative.

What I saw on the plane, people handling email, was an example of a small thing done consistently in a strategic place that created a major negative impact. This small thing was opening an email, looking at it and making the decision not to do anything with it at that time. They made the choice to come back to the email later and do something with it. On the airplane was the later time. Instead of sleeping or reading a good book or watching a movie and relaxing, they were then forced to be heavily engaged and focused, catching up on all the stuff they let accumulate during the week.

The small thing they could have done consistently in a strategic place that would have created a major positive impact would have been to open each email and make a decision to either Dump it, Do it, Delegate it or Defer it. They would then be facing an empty inbox on the plane. The only decisions they would be making is whether they were going to sleep, watch a movie, read a book or magazine or having a conversation with a seat mate who might just be a potential new friend, client or the next President of the United States.