Welcome Professionals…
…I guess you are drowning in emails. As a top management consultant you most likely deal with a lot of stakeholders, there is a vast amount of information to be processed and extensive communication to be done. Yes, we all know, that checking emails is unproductive, but did you actually know that it is addictive?
Psychologists refer to the phenomenon as the “random awards system”. It was first discussed by American psychologist B. F. Skinner in the 1930ies when he did some experiments with rats. The rats received a reward every now and then for a certain behaviour like pressing a lever in a box. When the reward followed a fixed scheme, it was not nearly as fascinating for the rats as a random award. The random mode turned out to be addictive.
I am far from comparing top management consultants with rats. But it is obvious to see some parallels here. When we synchronize our emails, we usually receive some spam, commercials, cc-fyi, and some additional work. Only sometimes we receive something nice like an invitation to a party, a funny joke from a friend or a compliment from one of our clients. These goodies are random, they do not follow a certain scheme. Thus, checking emails is a highly addictive action, this is why the typical smart phone user checks his emails 150 time a day on average.
Now think about it. Now that you know about the addiction, would you dare to keep the email temptation right next to you while you have some work to do? If I had a tendency of drinking too much, would I keep a sixpack of beer in the fridge at the office? Certainly not!
Deep work and checking email don’t go together!
Stay clean,
Malte
Malte