Checking e-mail too often can waste time.
Each time you read a message, you are forced to think about it and you lose your focus on the task at hand. Turn off your e-mail alert and set specific times of day to check your in-box.
Also discourage people who forward you unwanted messages. Set your e-mail filter to di- rect these messages to your spam folder or tell the sender that you cannot receive personal mes- sages at work (Merritt, 2009).
Outgoing Messages Writing clear messages helps increase prompt and useful responses. Here are some tips:
● Direct messages only to the people involved (e.g., committee members) and copy others (e.g., the department chair).
● Title the subject line appropriately. For example, write “Meeting Friday morning” rather than “Information.”
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● Avoid salutations, if possible. “Dear” and “Hi” are often not needed on routine messages. ● Craft your message succinctly, but politely: “The division meeting will be held in confer-
ence room C at 9 a.m.”
Drop-In Visitors Although often friendly and seemingly harmless, the typical “got-a-minute?” drop-in visit is rarely as short as that. Take charge of the visit by identifying the issue or question, arranging an alternative meeting, referring the visitor to someone else, or redirecting the visitor’s problem- solving efforts.
If you are fortunate enough to have an office, you will find that open doors are open invita- tions for interruption. Although it is essential that you be available and accessible, you also need time to concentrate. Tell staff that you will be available for a specific block of time (a few hours at most) to address issues.
Of course, some interruptions are important and/or urgent. You must attend to those. For others, however, you can control the duration of the drop-in visitor (Jones & Loftus, 2009). Stand and remain standing. This appears gracious, yet is obvious enough to encourage a short visit. Before the person leaves, politely suggest that he or she visit during your office hours or send an e-mail to make a future appointment.
You can also control interruptions through the way you arrange your office furniture. You are asking for interruptions when you arrange your desk in a way that permits eye contact with passersby or drop-in visitors. A desk turned 90 or even 180 degrees from the door minimizes potential eye contact.
Encouraging people to make appointments to deal with routine matters also reduces inter- ruptions. Regularly scheduled meetings with people who need to see you allow them to hold routine matters for those appointments. Meeting in someone else’s office places you in charge of the time spent: it is easier to leave someone’s office than to ask someone to leave yours.
Paperwork Health care organizations cannot function effectively without good information systems. In addition to phone calls and face-to-face conversations, nurses and managers spend consider- able time writing and reading communications. Increasing government regulations, measures to avoid legal action, stronger privacy requirements, new treatments and medications, data process- ing, work processing, and electronics place pressure on everyone to cope with increasing paper- work (including electronic “paperwork”).