In the modern business world, there are countless distractions that prevent you from doing the work you should be doing to produce the results you want. There's the chit-chat around the water cooler, there's the news of the day and, of course, there is that weapon of mass distraction: the Internet. It's blatantly not work; it doesn't look or feel remotely like work.
But there are countless more distractions that aren't so obvious. Some of them look and feel like work, but they're not.
Legitimate distractions. When you wake up in the morning, how many emails are waiting for you in your inbox? How many of those emails are internal emails from your own company? How many of them are requests from within your own company that ask that you to do something, request a reply or request information? How many emails provide information of very little value to you, yet you are CC'd on them anyway?
The internal emails you received from your company are legitimate, right? They must be important, yes? This is the way your company has chosen to communicate and share information, so it's work, right? Wrong.
Most of your email is not legitimate work. Even some email asking you for information or a reply isn't really legitimate work. Most of it's a distraction from the real work of sales and selling. Much of the email you receive are tasks assigned to you by other people without you ever agreeing to the task.
The email you receive and the tasks embedded in them feel like real work. It's real communication from within your own company, and what they request of you feels important. And some of it surely is. But most of it will do nothing to improve your sales results.
This is why you should avoid checking your email until you have completed your most important tasks for the day.
