Appraisals, inductions, customer service excellence and dreaming about work...

As I mentioned in my previous post, I've been one busy girlmeetslibrary the past few weeks. It's just been the way it's worked out that I've had a bit of a whirlwind of courses, events and meetings to attend. 'What's the matter with that?!' I hear you cry. 'Nothing!' I cry back. It's been a really challenging and fun few weeks at work. But what I didn't bargain for was the amount of emails I'd have waiting in my inbox at the end of it all. My new job of course brings new responsibilities and with it lots of emails, lots of work to do from them and lots of important documents to read through and comment back on. I'm not complaining about this at all, but I don't think I've personally encountered 'email overload' on this scale since my graduate trainee days. The opening paragraph of this article  (which I found via @woodsiegirl on twitter) pretty much sums it up:-

Does this happen to you?

You're sitting at your desk, minding your own business/doing research/planning your lunch, when an e-mail notification of some sort pops up. (I prefer the little envelope in the lower corner of my screen and a gentle  tone.) There's a flutter of excitement, a feeling of dread. Who's it from? What are they asking for? Will it evoke a chuckle? (I hope it's not spam.) Can I help this person? Then, you stop what you're doing and open the message.

Oh yes, that happens to me! But does it really make me efficient? In my case, reflecting on the past two weeks, the answer is a big fat no. In my rush to scan through the emails, I found I neglected to read some of them thoroughly, which just resulted in a brain ache and having to read them all over again. On a few occasions it also resulted in me checking my emails when I got home and also dreaming about work, twitter and then work again, especially about tasks that were 'hanging over.' I know that this is going to be inevitable sometimes but it's not a pattern I want to completely make a habit of. I officially love my job but I also want to make sure I'm not constantly thinking about work stuff when I get home (as I do have a tendency to be a bit of a worrier sometimes).

My plan so far? I've been setting aside certain times during the day to check my emails and have been trying not to stray and open them when they pop up on the right hand side of the screen. Most importantly, I've been consciously focusing on the one thing that I'm doing. Simples right? It's more than manageable. Many of you may be thinking 'well, d'uh' but as a newbie to the problem, I haven't really had to solve this obstacle before.

I've also taken to only checking social networking sites once a day. On reflection, I think having an iPhone has only made me worse at consistently checking emails and sites like Twitter. I was on the bus the other day and I noticed that every single person (bar one or two) had their head down and was looking at their phone, for near enough the whole journey. Now I'm so guilty of this. I was one of those people. Heck, I was even one of those reallllly annoying people who would be texting or checking updates whilst walking along the pavement (you know those people that make you just want to shout 'LOOK WHERE YOU'RE GOING' at). It got me thinking, is this constant check-check-checking really necessary? In terms of things like Twitter, I know this now makes me not exactly on the ball, but I'll still pool what I need professionally and I think it's what's going to keep me sane.

So this is my plan and it seems to be working, alongside the ever favourite 'to do' list.

Speaking of lists, those of you who attended TeachMeet2 in Cambridge last week will already have heard about Teux Deux, the super whizzy 'to do' list app for on the go. Personally, I'm more of a 'write it in capital letters on a post it note so its staring me right in the face when I arrive at work at 8.30am' kinda gal, but I'd really recommend checking Teux Deux out if you haven't already.

Has anyone else got any time management tips they'd like to share with me? All will be gratefully received!