Why You Shouldn’t Check Your Email First Thing in the Morning

We already know we check our email way too often and that the web is crucial to our morning routine, but blogger Sid Savara explains that answering email first thing in the morning does nothing but kill productivity.

It boils down to this: if you start going through your inbox first thing in the morning (as many of us are wont to do), you lose any chance you had of going full steam ahead on your important project of the morning. You immediately wake up and start distracting yourself with everyone else's needs:

As soon as you get up, work on something important for 30-45 minutes, and only then check it. If you can stand it, wait even longer. Some days I don't check email at all until after lunch.

And you know what? As long as you're ignorant of everything else that's going on outside, you can concentrate on what you want to work on.

You don't know what fires need to be put out, you don't know about that special sale that's going on today and you don't know about that funny video your buddy sent you.

In general, Savara says, you should already know what you need to work on when you start your day. If you start checking email, you will move to one of a million other things that supposedly need your attention instead, when they're probably less important.

What do you think? Do you find email just distracts and confuses you in the morning, or do you think you're able to separate the distractions from the things that actually take precedence over your first task of the day? Share your thoughts with us in the comments. Photo by Razvan Caliman.

7 Reasons You Should Never Check Email in the Morning [Sid Savara via Hacker News]