Drowning in e-mail, instant messages, RSS feeds, and other electronic communications? Web Worker Daily has a suggestion: limit yourself to once-a-day interaction with all these interruptive forces, thus freeing yourself to do actual work for the rest of the day.
Author Leo Babauta offers eight rules for turning this crazy idea into reality, including pruning your RSS feeds, dealing with each e-mail immediately (via reply, deletion, archiving, or action), and notifying your contacts of your new policy.
Personally, I couldn’t do this, as I work with editors who often require quick turnaround on questions, edits, etc. Plus, because I’m chained up in my basement office all day, I enjoy the occasional IM interaction with friends and colleagues. On the other hand, I can definitely see the appeal: I get a lot more writing done when I’m free of distraction.
How about you? Think you could adopt this method? Or do you have a different way of insulating yourself from digital interruptions so you can get your work done?
