Darren Rowse, of ProBlogger fame, has posted a productivity tip to help the overworked masses: “Turn down the frequency [...]

I actually prioritize my email accounts and set Thunderbird to check them more often by order of importance – some are set to be checked manually.

Regarding the blog comments, I actually set a filter to send them to their own folders.

Filters are good…very good. :)

A more serious tip though: turn off your “email comments to yourself” feature. When I was guest blogging here the amount of email I was getting doubled overnight. I do try to check my comments on my blogs, but I don’t need them clutering my already ridiculously full inbox, you’ll find it cuts down on your email a bit. What I tend to do is check comments twice a day through WordPress on my bigger sites, much more efficent this way.

I’ve switched to checking emails only three times a day, morning, late afternoon and late evening. That way it doesn;t consume too much time out of the day. I don’t get enmough mail to warrant checking constantly, and emails I receive tend to be able to wait at least 8 hours or so before a response is sent.

I find it worse returning back from holiday to find a few thousand emails sitting there, this can take ages to sort and respond to.

Also, you mention IM and such. I turn that off while I’m working. It’s a bigger distraction than it is useful.

On Darren’s tip: That’s a great tip. I did that very thing a few months back and it’s been wonderfully effective. ‘cept I changed it to once every two hours. I do check manually quite a bit, but at least it’s not constantly distracting me.

haha…

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