Stephen Robbins here.

Welcome to the Get It Done Guys quick and dirty tips to work less and do more.

Procrastination is the subject of an entire chapter of my book,

Get It Done Guys, Nine Steps to Work Less and Do More.

It's common, and we usually think of it as our enemy.

But anything that powerful can also be a force for good.

Today, we're going to use procrastination usefully.

We're going to procrastinate email.

It's possible to write an email today, but delay it, so it actually arrives someday in the future. That little delay,

it turns email from a tool for overload into a tool for making life better. Here are my four

quick and dirty tips to use deferred email to your advantage. Tip number one, slow down

conversations. Some people use email like a conversation.

You send them a brief note, and they reply with a 10-page missive,

telling you about the emotional hurdles they've tackled and getting over the death of their pet bird fluffy 11 years ago.

If you send your sympathetic reply immediately,

you'll be treated to an instantaneous response with more

heartfelt outbursts than one person should ever be subjected to. Personal connection is important,

but so is your sanity. When you're in a conversation that's distracting you from what you want

to get done, simply delay your responses. You can compose your homage to Fluffy the Bird now and send it to be

delivered in two days. You keep the connection going, but you slow it down to a manageable pace.

Tip number two, clear to-do list clutter. Sometimes to-do items appear that aren't quite appropriate

for today, but you don't want them cluttering up your calendar or spending weeks on your to-do items appear that aren't quite appropriate for today, but you don't want

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