That’s right your email is taking cash from your pocket and most people don’t even realize that it is happening to them.

To be more precise I should say that email and hype are killing your profits.

I bet you are wondering how email can be killing your profits, after all didn’t it just tell you that you won millions in a number of different lotteries or that you can make millions just by helping some prince transfer money to your country.

Just in case you are very new and haven’t received any of these type of emails, please note they are scams and all it will do is cost you time and take your money. So, don’t respond to them and don’t even bother reading them, just delete them and be done with it.

But these scams aren’t the emails that are killing your profits. The emails that are killing your profits are the ones that you stop and read, especially the ones that promise untold fortunes with no work.

I am not sure if he coined the phrase or not, but Willie Crawford is the first person I heard use the term, “Time Vampires” and Time Vampires can cut into your profits like a hot knife through butter.

There are other Time Vampires besides email but I personally find that email is my biggest Time Vampire.

See if you can relate to this situation. I am working on writing a post for a blog or anything that will remove an item from my to do list, and all of the sudden the little tone that signals the arrival of an email sounds.

What do I do? I go and look at the email, after all it might be something that requires my attention.

But noooooo! When I go and look it is just the latest product being launched that will end up in my email box a bunch of times. Of course I have to check out the sales page to see what they are offering and of course it is the solution to all my problems, financial, personal and maybe even internet marketing related. All I have to do is give them my money and voila, I will be set for life.

Just as I am about to press the order now button I heard that magical email notification tone and I go back and see what new has arrived in my email, again it might be something that urgently needs my attention.

But nooooo! It is an email from Mike telling me about a video on YouTube that I just have to see.

But of course I don’t fall for this trap. I go right back to work…after I check out the video, and it was hilarious, a monkey, a chicken and a horse all tap dancing. Great video! It was only 9 minutes long so it was definitely worth the time.

Just as I am heading back to work, guess what? The magical email notification tone sounds again. I better go check it might be something that urgently needs my attention.

This time it actually is something that needs my attention. One of the members at one of my sites can’t view the videos with Vista.

Time to do some work and find out why it isn’t working, I quickly jump over to my laptop that runs Vista to see if I can replicate the problem. It is working fine for me in Vista, so off I go to Google and Microsoft to see if this problem has been reported before, no luck.

I am getting ready to send off an email response that says I am looking into it and so far I haven’t found a problem when the magic email signals again.

It turns out my member didn’t realize the video didn’t autoplay and when they clicked the play button it worked fine.

Now back to the post I was writing for my blog. No it is now time for dinner; I guess I can write the post tomorrow.

This might be exaggerated a little, but not much. The Time Vampires are the stealthiest of their breed and you won’t realize they have struck until well after the fact.

When you are working follow your plan and try to avoid distractions. This is called focus and if you are focused it is the most powerful agent against Time Vampires you can find. Even more powerful then those garlic cloves you are wearing.

Turn off your email for an hour, the world won’t end. Turn off your phone and find a comfortable place to get your work done. I believe for Willie this is on the beach, for you it might be somewhere different.

But focus and you will not only bring about the death of the Time Vampires from starvation but you most likely will also notice your wallet getting fatter.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 6:06 am and is filed under Focus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.