Never Check Your Email First Or Last

Many people know you should not check email first thing in the morning – It gives you peace of mind to finish other stuff in the morning before opening any hauling emails and being obligated by not answering it immediately. LifeDev takes this to the next level and says checking email at the end of the day is not a good idea as well:

Checking my email at night before I went to bed soon started to affect other areas of my life. The most obvious thing was that I was staying up much later than I planned. Email is great at distracting you, mainly because you can open it up and anything can be waiting for you inside. A work proposal, one of 10 uninteresting forwards from your grandma that day, a really weird Japanese game show video; anything can be in there. And because you can’t plan on what’s in there, you have to check it all. And it will distract you, mark my words. You’ll watch the movie, and then you’ll want to watch more because it was sooo funny, and pretty soon you’re no longer checking your email. Before you know it, you’ll have spent an hour “checking your email”, and you hadn’t really gotten anything done.

Good advice. If you check your email at the end of the day – either be very discipline on what are you going to read and reply, or else do not even check at all.

Never Check Your Email First Or Last – [LifeDev]