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For you who prefer listening to reading, this post is also available as an episode of the ""Done!"" podcast:

And, fur­ther down the list, there’s that one from yes­ter­day con­tain­ing a prob­lem you don’t know how to solve – but you start think­ing about it. Sud­den­ly, you’ve lost your con­cen­tra­tion on the task you were work­ing on. Your pre­cious time has gone to some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent from what you need­ed to get done before the next meeting.

A minor spoke in the wheel

It’s these small every­day events that can make us feel like we don’t have con­trol over our time. Less often than we would like, it is we our­selves who decide what we do with it.

What if it were pos­si­ble to send an email quick­ly and eas­i­ly with­out hav­ing to pass the inbox?

It is.

Do this

If you email in Out­look (in Windows):

1. Cre­ate a new short­cut – on the desk­top, for exam­ple. Right-click on the desk­top, choose New, and then Shortcut.

2. In the field for the loca­tion the short­cut should point to, type ​“Mail­to:”.

3. Choose a good name for the short­cut, such as ​“New email,” and save.

4. When you want to cre­ate a new email quick­ly, dou­ble-click the short­cut and you’ll go straight into a new email. (Sure, you might glimpse the inbox briefly, but very quick­ly the new email takes over the view instead.)

If you email in Gmail:

1. In Gmail on the web, place your­self in a view that doesn’t mat­ter if you glimpse it when you’re about to write a new email – the trash, maybe.

2. Click the but­ton for a new email.

3. Cre­ate a book­mark or short­cut from the URL in the browser’s address bar.

4. When you want to send a quick email, click the book­mark. Since you were in a dif­fer­ent view than the inbox when you cre­at­ed the book­mark, that view will come up in the back­ground instead of the inbox.

Take con­trol instead of being controlled

If you take a short­cut to the new email you’re going to write, you’ll get it sent quick­ly with­out being dis­tract­ed by oth­er emails you need to han­dle lat­er. You main­tain con­cen­tra­tion on the task at hand. You take con­trol instead of being con­trolled by circumstances.

What about you?

Do you have anoth­er trick for email­ing with­out get­ting dis­tract­ed by your emails? Please write to me and tell me, because I often meet peo­ple who encounter exact­ly this spe­cif­ic phe­nom­e­non. Your email is most welcome.

(Look­ing to min­i­mize the num­ber of inter­rup­tions and still keep track of the arrival of impor­tant emails? Read more how to only get noti­fi­ca­tions for cer­tain emails!)