Turning off my email push notifications on my mobile phone

I used to think it was great to have my mobile device notify me the second I receive a new email. This is known as "Push" notifications. This way I would never miss a client request or important email. I also have Gchat installed on my PC, which notifies me in the bottom right hand corner every time a new email comes in. So, if I was sitting at my desk working away on a task and a new email came in, I would get a notification on my PC from gchat, and my phone would vibrate and make a tone. I thought this was great, because I would never miss that all important email.

The obvious problem with this is that it becomes a major distraction. Humans are not meant to move from task to task. I know we all think multi-tasking is the only way in this new hyper world, but the human brain can only focus on 1 task at a time. So, if you're working productively on a task, then an email comes in, I'd read the notification, then read the email if it seemed even slightly important. I'd then have to ramp back up on the task at hand. As the owner of my company, this becomes an issue when I'm getting hundreds of emails a day, and a major distraction. I am already ADD, so this is just amplifying the problem!

The solution? Turn off those notifications! If an email is that important or urgent and needs to be addressed immediately, the person will call. I have since changed the settings on my iPhone to fetch. This means my phone only downloads emails when I tell it to. I've been doing this for only the past week and I can tell you I am more productive already. I can't prove it, but I feel like my blood pressure has been lowered as well. This week I had lunch with an old friend, so the time was valuable since I hadn't seen him for a year. If it had been a week earlier, I'd be checking my phone every time a new email came in when the phone vibrated in my pocket. This would be a waste of time, especially since none of those emails are ever that important. I was able to dedicate 100% of my attention to my friend.

Taking this a step further, everyone nowadays brings their cellphones to meetings. We are all tempted to check our phones to make sure we are not missing that "important" email. You look around the room and everyone has their phones on the conference room table, and periodically checking their phones. Well, we are instituting a new policy at FIPPEX, no cell phones in the conference room. This allows everyone to focus on the agenda of the meeting, after all, why call a meeting in the first place if people are distracted every time their phone vibrates or lights up. At our office, we only call meetings when absolutely necessary, so when we do we need to make sure we are as productive as possible, and use everyone's time as best as possible.

The bottom line is, to increase productivity - turn off those notifications and keep cellphones out of meetings!