Here  is the fourth in a short series of tips from Time Management Mum Nadine Hill to help you out if you are juggling kids and work – watch out for more tips over the next few weeks and an article on the 9th of March.

Nadine says, “Be disciplined when it comes to technology and especially email! Productive time can be wasted when you are constantly checking your messages as they come in, and when you work this way, you are allowing other people to dictate what happens in your day, rather than dealing with your own priorities in order. To stop this, turn off the email and only log in twice or three times a day! If it helps you relax, you can create an email autoresponder to tell people that you are just checking at certain intervals and they can expect a reply soon. At least then they have had some response from you. However just because email is such an immediate method of communication, this doesn’t always mean we have to respond immediately – give email the place in your life it deserves. A very useful tool but not your dictator!”

Nadine Hill runs a boutique Virtual Assistance business based in Yorkshire and is a ‘hands on’ mum of two children under six. She also writes a blog for working mums called Time Management Mum.