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When Citibank's Michael Hendriks got his BlackBerry, he hoped it would let him escape the tyranny of the inbox. However, like the millions of others who have taken to mobile email, he discovered that smartphones are no silver bullet for productivity.

"I struggled with email, like a lot of other people," Mr Hendriks says. "You're away from your desk or office, then you come back to face masses of email and waste a lot of time going through your inbox. You think you're getting the BlackBerry to help you with that but what happens is that the inbox chases you everywhere."

Mr Hendriks' experience is not unique. Email-capable smartphones already comprise 26.8% of mobile phone shipments in Australia, according to IDC Australia analyst Mark Novosel. That's a substantial jump from 21% penetration at the end of 2006 and Mr Novosel says the surge will continue until almost half of mobile phones sold in Australia are capable of receiving "push email".

So the tide of email becomes a tsunami that soon spills into your pocket and, if you're not careful, more of your precious non-work time.

"When I first got the BlackBerry I also kept my mobile phone, and I'd simply turn the BlackBerry off outside work hours," Mr Hendriks says.

"The big challenge was when I got sick of carrying two handsets around, so the BlackBerry became my mobile phone as well. Then I couldn't turn it off in case people were trying to call me and because the handset is with you all the time you find the temptation to do email (all the time)."

Mr Hendriks fell into the trap of having his day driven by other people's email rather than his own priorities, says time management trainer Dermot Crowley.

Through his company Adapt Training Solutions, Mr Crowley runs BlackBerry courses for clients including Macquarie Bank, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and NAB. He found that although most senior employees in big organisations are skilled time managers they're off-guard when email enters the equation.

"Email is an unprecedented change in the workplace" Mr Crowley says. "People are getting hundreds of emails every day and are drowning in that email. Organisations are throwing things like the BlackBerry at that problem but unless people have a good process around how they manage emails, a BlackBerry or other smartphone can never really make a huge difference.
"I teach people a process for using desktop software such as Outlook or Lotus Notes to manage their time more effectively.

Sometimes we create the problems ourselves, if we haven't really thought about when you should switch it off, or when do you need to have downtime from email and be focused on other things."

For people such as Mr Hendriks, who is Citibank's head of decision management, Mr Crowley's training emphasised the need to put email back in its place. "If you come to work, turn on your computer and just look at the inbox and work the emails as they come in, there's no sense of prioritisation and focus. You can't get any sense of what's important to you, and that should come from what you've put in your diary and your task list. That's helped me not get sucked into the temptation that with the BlackBerry, email is always there." Mr Hendriks disabled the default buzz and vibrate alerts to new email. "You hear that beep and it's like Pavlov's dog, you've got to check your email. That's one of the the first things you should turn off."