10 Ways to Take Control of Your Day

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1. Personal Technology

Our smartphones ? and now smartwatches ? have blurred the line between personal and professional communication. We can now receive work emails and phone calls on the same device as private Facebook comments, Instagram photos, and an array of other personal information.

Given such technology's addictive nature, policies to control their use at work are rarely effective, as it's hard to enforce rules about what people can look at on their own devices.

It's usually more helpful if individuals understand and manage the challenge themselves. For example, you and your colleagues could agree to put away your phones for a certain time during the day, to help you to focus on a particular piece of work.

2. Email

Many of the emails in our inboxes are not particularly important. However, we often feel the need to look at them as soon as they arrive. So, here are five ways to manage those messages so that they don't take you away from important tasks.

Schedule checking time ? Turn off the alert that appears on your computer screen when you receive an email, and check and respond to messages at set times of the day. Give yourself a maximum of 30 minutes for each session. Manage your co-workers', manager's and customers' expectations about how and when you will reply to them.
Choose "low productivity" times ? There are likely certain times of day when you do your best work Add to My Personal Learning Plan, maybe in the morning or maybe late at night. Schedule an email check-in for your less productive times, and save your peak hours for high-value work.
Turn emails into actions ? If you need more than a few minutes to read or reply to an email, add it to your Action Program Add to My Personal Learning Plan or To-Do List.
Use the trash ? Don't keep emails forever. If you do, you run the risk of losing sight of the important ones as your inbox grows, and of your inbox becoming harder and harder to manage. Once you've replied to them, put the ones that you don't need in the trash, and archive or file the ones that you want to keep.
Smartphone syncing ? Try redirecting your email to your smartphone, to help you to free up your computer from distractions. Then apply the advice we've given above to your personal device.

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/distractions.htm