How do your email habits differ from high-level executives?

You wake up in the morning. Reach for your smartphone. Get dressed. Take that daunting commute to work. And like most people, when you reach the office you'll take a crack at your Inbox. But, consider this, how does your morning routine differ from high-level executives and how much of it is a waste of time?

Reading and responding to email is the first thing nearly two-thirds (65 per cent) of CFOs do when they reach the office, according to a new survey by temporary staffing agency Accountemps.

After some Inbox maintenance, creating a to-do-list came in a distant second. In third place, 7 per cent of executives begin their day by working on a project.

But emailing may not be the most productive way to spend your time.

A recent survey conducted by Robert Half suggests 14 per cent of CFOs believe work related emails are actually “the greatest time waster."

Bruce Waterman, who spent more than 10 years at the executive level at Agrium Inc and is the chair of the selection committee of Canada’s CFO of the year, says the volume of email has the tendency to challenge the work productivity of a CFO.

“One of the more challenging things is managing the financial process and balancing that with the strategic business input,” says Waterman, who is now retired and sits on a number of boards including Irving Oil.

Waterman, who says he received upwards of 150 emails everyday as a CFO, also says “information overload” as a CFO is a common problem, particularly when dealing with email.

Email, one scholar argues, has the potential to hinder ones productivity by disrupting and diminishing the ability to focus on important tasks, such as managing the financial risk of a complex institution, just one element tasked to chief financial officers.

Email takes roughly a quarter of a person’s day according to an email statistics report conducted by The Radicati Group, a Palo Alto-based technology market research firm. The report also suggests the average number of corporate messages, both sent and received per day, has increased steadily, from 167 in 2009 to 219 in 2013.

How to deal with the flood

But Dianne Hunnam-Jones, Canadian district president of Accountemps, says employees can do a number of things to maximize their morning potential.

“For one, prioritize responses. Replying to every email the instant it arrives can cause frequent interruptions to your workflow and hamper productivity, Hunnam-Jones says.

“Instead, briefly scan the content of messages you receive, immediately answering only those that are urgent.”