From the course: Time Management Fundamentals

Choosing your messaging app

From the course: Time Management Fundamentals

Choosing your messaging app

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- Messaging has become critical to our productivity. Many love it for the speed of communication it offers. Unfortunately, with that speed comes an abundance of switch tasking. A study by RescueTime found that workers can only focus for about six minutes until they check instant messages or email. That's 10 times per hour. You can reduce attention switches by reducing the number of messaging apps you use and how often you check them. Even if you check your messaging app every hour on the hour, you're still significantly reducing switch tasking. If you're a freelancer or entrepreneur on your own, then choosing to not use multiple apps is simple. But if you're working for an organization, this may require a friendly, open conversation with your team about the apps you are using. See if you can reduce an app or two as well as set expectations for reply times. You may also need to have a separate app for true emergencies. For example, a company may use an official chat for projects and tasks but reserve text messages for emergencies only. If your workplace uses a second app, you can consider that a wild card gathering point. Yes, it might bring your total above six, but that's less distracting than mixing time-flexible messages with true emergencies. Be aware that if a work conversation becomes more involved than a quick answer or two, it's probably more productive to switch to a phone call. You'll end up paying far less switching cost. Also be aware, many messaging apps, especially on social media, allow for routing messages to another approved gathering point, such as email. You can do a search to see if your app permits that. Take a moment to choose which messaging app you'll use as an approved gathering point.

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