Why I break my own rules

Colleagues,

I checked my email and had something I needed to respond to. As I thought about my reply, I noticed there was an email in my junk folder. 99% of the email that winds up in my junk folder is junk, so I was pretty sure that it was nothing important.
 
Guess what? 
 
I checked it “to make sure” that it wasn’t anything important. It wasn’t.
 
Dissecting what happened:

1. I prepared myself to respond to an email.
2. I let my focus shift.
3. I jumped on something that was urgent (an unread message) but unimportant.
4. I then had to refocus and gather my thoughts to respond to the email.

 
It wasn’t a huge deal, except that this kind of thing happens over and over throughout the day. 
 
All of these little deviations and interruptions add up and undermine our ability to focus on what is important. 
 
Try this: monitor every little thing you do today. Identify all of the little things you do that aren’t important and that break your flow.
 
Do good and be well,
 
Frederick