An over-crowded schedule, an endless to-do list, a continuous stream of e-mails. In Issue 16 you can read ten tips on how to have more clarity and be more relaxed at work. In this blog you can read one of them.
Plan e-mail sessions
Checking our e-mail is usually the first thing we do in the morning at our desk, but it’s best to let go of this habit. “Immediately accessing your e-mail guarantees a flood of short-term problems,” Danish mindfulness expert Rasmus Hougaard says. “As your brain adapts to this tempo, your early-morning creativity completely evaporates.” These first precious hours of the workday, in which your thinking brain is at its strongest, are best unleashed on the hardest mental tasks.
Hougaard’s advice: Don’t open your inbox in the morning; turn off all notifications and plan two e-mail sessions every day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. If you feel the need to check your e-mail in between these two sessions, take a short break from your work instead. By pausing a bit, you will see that you have a choice: Impulses come and go, but the decision to act on an impulse is up to you.
- You can find the article in Flow Magazine issue 16.
- Irene, founder and creative director of Flow, writes a lot about mindfulness. You can read her pieces here.
Text Otje van der Lelij Photography Trinette Reed / Stocky United
