#1 – Ignorance Is Bliss..fully Productive No, this gets you fired. At a startup, this gets you bad PR or worse, your servers burn in a fiery death as they get

#1 – Ignorance Is Bliss..fully Productive No, this gets you fired. At a startup, this gets you bad PR or worse, your servers burn in a fiery death as they get Slashdotted to heck and back while you "work on something important." #2 – It’s Not Your Todo List Actually, it is. I use Outlook's task pane to mark things for follow up. Without it, I'd forget a lot of things. #3 – It’s An Excuse To Lack Direction If you get enough email that this buys you enough time to get so distracted you can't work, then you need a better spam filter, or a more private email address. There is no reason you need to be on the front lines all the time. Intelligent filtering can help. #4 – Reaction vs “Proaction” Sometimes you need to react, because you didn't pro-act. #5 – Searching For Excuses If the excuse is good enough to stop working, perhaps you need better work. #6 – There’s No Set Time Limit So? Communication is more important than most menial tasks. Its the basis by which things get designed, built, and maintained. Don't underestimate the power of communication as a tool. Don't try to avoid it. #7 – It Builds Expectation I don't always respond to people immediately, but I do like to think before I reply. Sometimes I'll go off and draft have a reply, save it, and come back to it. If its out of "working hours", I can leave it be til the next work day. Otherwise, I top out at a couple of hours for latency. Why? Because I want that expectation; to foster good team relationships and dependability.