Read Time: 5 min

How phone calls and emails sabotage productivity and how to fix it.

Phone calls and emails are my arch-nemesis for productivity.

A few years ago, my heart was pounding, my thoughts were spinning, and I could feel the cold sweat on my forehead.

It was that time of day again. I was about to open my email inbox at the start of my workday.

I know it. It will be at least 30 new emails again.

90% of them will be spam.
5% from people requesting nonsensical information or favors from me.
The other 5% will be invoices that need to be paid.

There is never anything good in there for me.

A few hours later, I worked through half of the requests marked as urgent by the sender.

I glance at the time: 10 am in the European time zone.

My phone starts to ring non-stop.

Insurance, marketing agencies, recruiters, and other service providers are trying to reach me.

They have exactly what I need, or so they try to tell me.

When did I tell anyone that I required any of these services?

Where did they even get this number from?

Half my day is gone when I'm through with these calls and my inbox.

It was one of the better days. On bad days, my inbox eats up my whole day.

A typical day in the life of an average founder, I guess.

Is it my job to answer emails or to create value for our customers? 🤔

A startup mentor once told me to call the person directly if I want something done.

In our generally unproductive professional world, this might be true.

As a side effect, calling someone directly slows these people down even more.

These tools should increase our productivity. They should make life easier.

Instead, they enslave us.

They keep us from doing what we need to do.

Sometimes, they even induce anxiety.

There is seldom anything positive on the other end.

Why Phone Calls and Emails are Unproductive

They are Interruptions

Interruptions are the death of productive work.

Every ringing of my phone, every binging of my inbox interrupts my flow.

But they are part of the default work culture in most companies I have seen.

This is ridiculous!

If someone is interrupted, it increases stress, pressure and mental workload for them.

Additionally, it takes about 23 minutes to refocus on the interrupted task.

How much time do these interruptions alone slow me down every day?

Studies show that companies working 4-hour days are nearly as productive as companies working 8-hour days.

How is this possible? A 40% increase in productivity by halving the work time?

Parkinson's law tells us that a task will consume all the time set aside.

So if you have only 4 hours to do the same work as in 8 hours, you need to work very focused.

Interruptions make focused work impossible.

Actual value for our customers comes only from focused work.

So, I protect my focused work, setting aside blocks of uninterrupted work.

They are Unplanned Ad-hoc Tasks in a Full Schedule.

I plan what I will be working on today the night before.

This way, I can complete the scheduled tasks on time.

We do the same when developing software in Scrum processes.

We commit to a workload that we can finish during one sprint.

An unexpected email or phone call pulls us out of our neatly scheduled routine.

The other person wants something from us, and it is urgent.

Of course, I will help them out, only this one time.

Suddenly, I worked an hour longer in the evening because my actual tasks got delayed.

Tomorrow, the same thing happens again.

But I planned everything so nicely!

I should be better at saying no.

They are Filled With Poor Communication

I sound like a broken record soon, but communication is critical.

Emails and phone calls are a medium of communication.

What makes us think these tools would make us more productive without improving our communication first?

Most half-page emails I read could be condensed to a single sentence.

The senders are over-communicating, under-communicating, or communicating ambiguously.

All this eats up my time and makes further back-and-forth necessary.

Things that usually take one minute to answer suddenly accumulate to an hour of work time.

How to Use Phones Productively

I live by one simple rule to fix phone calls.

Never accept any incoming calls.

I make an exception for a select handful of people (less than 5).

I explicitly instructed them on what is urgent enough to qualify for direct calls.

This is the only exception.

If someone wants to talk to me, they can reserve a time slot in my calendar at least one day in advance.

Please use a digital calendar and scheduling links for the good of everyone involved.

If it is more urgent than that, it is their problem.

They could have planned better or accounted for delays.

When a new call is scheduled, I check if there is an agenda for the call.

If not, I will email that person for an agenda.

I accept that call only when there is an agenda, and there’s nothing I can answer with a short email.

Then, during the call, I stay on topic and end on time.

If more time is needed, a follow-up can be scheduled directly during the call.

How to Use Emails Productively

My first rule for emails is to:

Never make your direct email contact public.

This is how I keep 90% of spam out of my inbox.

The second rule is:

Only check your emails once a day.

Either right before lunch or before I log off for the day.

I also limit the time for this email check.

Use tags to organize your inbox.

Everything that takes longer than 3 minutes to handle gets flagged. I set aside extra time in the coming days to address these.

Use the schedule feature for your email to send emails the following day. So you're not interrupted by answers when you're focused on processing your inbox.

To cut back and forth, communicate clearly, directly, and unambiguously in your emails.

Most importantly:

Learn to say no.

I rigorously decide if something is relevant to me right now or not.

Communicate this directly, clearly and unambiguously.

When the other party doesn't accept my no, I block their email address.

I don't mingle with people who don't respect my boundaries.

Conclusion

I hope you understand now why phone calls and emails are a waste of time.

You're doing something wrong when:

You spend more than one hour daily in your inbox.
Or you answer a single unscheduled phone call.

If you follow these simple rules, you should be good.

Never answer the phone.
Schedule phone calls at least a day ahead of time.
Only accept a scheduled call if there is a clear agenda that can't be answered with a short email.
Never make your personal email public.
Check your inbox once at the end of your day.
Limit the time you spend in your inbox.
Learn to say no.

Tell me in the comments below how many hours do you spend in your inbox or on unscheduled calls each day.

What would it be worth for you to spend less time on that?

The Ruin of Productivity - Phone Calls & Emails