Recently I read a book, The 4-Hour Work Week, by Timothy Ferris.  While I wouldn’t wholeheartedly endorse the book, he did present some good ideas for being more efficient and not letting your work consume your life.

Timothy mentions what a lot of us realize but don’t know how to help – we are being overloaded with information.  From newspapers to news to blogs to websites, we are constantly overstimulated with facts.  The most disrupting of them all?  Email.

Those emails coming in every few minutes every day are constantly disrupting you from getting real work done, getting into the flow.

I decided to adopt one of the solutions Timothy suggests at Apt Design – only checking email twice a day.  Previously I would check email right when I got up, and then check any messages that came in within 30 seconds of their arriving.  Talk about a bunch of extra junk floating around in my head while I was trying to be creative!

So now I only check email at 11:00 am and 4:00 pm, and I try to immediately respond to whatever has come in.  This allows for 3+ hours of pure, uninterrupted creative worktime to begin each day.

The results have been fantastic so far.  That much time on one project has allowed me to create high-quality pieces.  I have also been completing a lot more work, finishing up at least 1 large Milestone a day.  Lastly, my brain is clearer at all times in the day.

So, maybe you should give this a shot.  Try out a low-information diet for a week, only checking emails twice a day.  See how much more productive you can become and let me know about it here in the comments!