Julie Morgenstern
There’s a scene in Woody Allen’s Oscar-winning Annie Hall in which Allen’s character, Alvy Singer, bemoans to his buddy, Rob, that “everything your parents said was good is bad: sun, milk, red meat, college.” Fast forward 33 years. Most everyone says it’s good (if not necessary) to check your e-mail first thing in the morning. But it can be lethal.
When sales reps check their e-mail before embarking on any other work, they put themselves in a reactionary, scattered-like mode, rather than starting the day in a productive, more focused mode, said Julie Morgenstern, founder of Julie Morgenstern Enterprises and author of “Never Check E-Mail In the Morning” and “Time Management from the Inside Out.”
Because sales reps operate in an interruption-rich environment, Morgenstern added, the very first hour of the work day is crucial. “Earn your salary in the first hour of the day,” Morgenstern said. “The first hour you should be focused on output and what is your most critical, high-value task of the day. It’s strategically looking at what is going to proactively drive your business forward. If you check e-mail, you get derailed for the rest of the day.”
Morgenstern said that a compulsion for checking e-mail often results in sales reps spinning their wheels because e-mail causes reps to constantly shift between (and among) tasks. “You can lose two, three hours a day because you’re constantly starting and stopping,” said Morgenstern, who has been guest on Good Morning America, NPR and the Today Show.
Part of the solution is what Morgenstern calls “Time Mapping.” “It’s having a basic structure to the day and week to do what you need to do and when to do it,” she said. “This time is for prospecting/forecasting/reporting/ existing clients. It’s creating buckets of time.”
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Since losing my job, I have fallen out of any kind of schedule, so I fall asleep in the chair with the mouse in my hand and the TV on…and I do check email first thing…I did not do it when I was working because I found that it interfered with me getting out of the house…
Hi Kathy: Thanks for your post and wishing you best of luck re job search. I was guilty too re checking e-mail first thing. Now, I get up and check BB to see if there’s anything urgent. Otherwise, once I get to laptop I do try and follow’s Julie’s dictum re attack work first, then respond, which, over time, is working much better (rather than initially going to email on laptop and, then, to varying degrees, getting sucked in for the first part of the work day). Best, Matthew