Book Review: New Check E-mail in the Morning

Never Check E-Mail in the Morning
And Other Unexpected Strategies for Making Your Work Life Work
By Julie Morgenstern, 2004

• Create a cone of electronic silence to start your day. Don't touch your e-mail for the first 60 minutes you are at work.

• Avoid seductive time busters: Internet surfing, voicemail and pointless meetings.

• Stop multi-tasking. This deceptive practice silently steals the quality and the quantity of your waking hours.

• Shrink your day. Delete 30 minutes from your work clock and add more efficiency.

• Set your time clock. Accurately measure how long a task takes. Measure three times.

• Make a conscious effort to be neat. Maintain a tidy workspace and desktop.

• Relate your "to-do" list to your revenue stream.

• Don't indulge in the twin demons of the workplace. Perfectionism and procrastination can haunt your career.

• Be honest: Are you making your life crazy or are others creating the disruptions? Would you have a better career if you corrected your quirks?

• Consciously create the right mix of people, physical activity, and rest and relaxation.

I don't know about you, but I do check email first thing in the morning. So I violated rule one in the book. But I do practice several of the author's other tips listed above.

What is the most beneficial thing that I do first thing in the morning? I meditate. Sitting in silence and creating some empty space for reality to paint itself on my mental canvas is the best thing in the world for me. Most importantly, meditation helps me remember "who I am," which comes in handy when my work day starts pulling at me to be things I'm not.

Would you like to know more about meditation, especially for executives? Go here and here and finally here for a more "researchy" article.

Buy the book at Amazon.com.