I recently gave a talk to creatives in my town and the single most talked about topic after was my two rules about phone use and email.

  1. No Screen Before Coffee
  2. No email before noon

Without a doubt, people loved the ideas, but no one I talked to thought that they could implement the strategies in their business.

They all said some variation of:

“Oh I love that idea Curtis, but I could never do that with my business. I have to answer emails right away.”

Some of them were in sales. Some of them were dealing with local businesses. Some of them were artists or even a web developer.

I don’t believe any of them, especially the web developer.

Very little is as emergent as you think

The more I talked to them the more it became clear that they were saying they couldn’t let email sit longer out of fear and momentum. They feared that something emergent would come up, but none of them were supporting any mission-critical systems.

There were no remote emergency nuclear power support technicians in the room.

They were all just worried about what others would think about the change in email habits.

I’ve never met anyone that couldn’t get away with checking their email less.

Try checking your email less

Give it a few weeks, but try to check your email less. Maybe it doesn’t have to be noon, but try not to check your email for the first 2 hours of the day.

I bet nothing changes.

Have an awesome day!

Curtis

PS: If you’re looking to get your focus down and your business on track, check out my 8 Week Business BootCamp.

photo credit: songzhen cc