Recently I was boarding an airplane and two guys ahead of me were discussing business. One said, “Are you following Mr. X’s emails on (a topic of their business). The second guy appeared to be the boss and he answered that he hadn’t seen any of it, wouldn’t look at it and considered it a waste of his time.
Good for him! We all need to be better disciplined at keeping the clutter out of our lives. Too many people get caught up in the minutia, office politics and things unimportant.
This requires focus and discipline. I know that when I have a handful of things to do I put them on paper, number them and start working on number one. I don’t do anything else (no email and often let calls go to voicemail) until that task is done, move to number two and so on down the list.
A machine shop owner wouldn’t let his machinists stop a job to do something trivial so why should management or the owner allow themselves to be distracted in this way?