If like me, you get lots of emails, then you’ll probably find you spend most of your day staring at your inbox, getting interrupted by countless spam emails and amazing offers from sales people. How much of your inbox is actual revenue generating work? I bet less than half.
So this is what I want you to do.
Gmail, or more specifically Google Apps is what I use. Its fast, works instantly, and I mean instantly on any device, is ever reliable and is limitless (I have 126,694 emails in my inbox and it works super fast, 100% of the time)
Some quick tips include shortcuts & commands to get around quicker.
If you’re not a Google fan, then Office 365 or good old Outlook is just as good, but gets a bit clunky when it fills up. Its also no where near as fast or compatibile as Google Mail.
The more emails you get, the more time time you spend checking each one, the more you get distracted, the more time you waste.
Spend the next hour unsubscribing, do you really need those daily deals or the Facebook notification emails? Its all designed to get you to buy something.
If you’re a heavy emailer like me, make the first 30 minutes of every hour dedicated to emails so then you can spend the second part of that hour doing actual work, you know the stuff that pays the bills?
If you’re like me, you’ll probably be saying a lot of the same stuff, think how long it takes to write all those emails every time. Start building up some templates.
If like me, you get lots of emails, and you’ll probably find yourself spending most of your day staring at your inbox, getting interrupted by countless spam emails and amazing offers from sales people. How much of your inbox is actual revenue generating work? I bet less than half.
I currently have 694 emails in my mailbox and to optimize my mailbox I had to go through an effort to unsubscribe from all Facebook, sales and other spam mails that occupies me not only with irrelevant data to my business but sales that I am not interested in.
You don’t need all the sales and notification mails and if you do, it should be of importance (for example login alerts or banking related). So I started by clearing out all forms of marketing mails of any sort. In this way I know what is in my mailbox is work and revenue related.
A proper mail programme is vital for your day to day operations in your business as you need to stay on top of your daily activities and your mails. Therefore choosing the best programme for your needs is vital.
Most of you, like myself are moving into an ever flexible working environment where we work from coffee shops, remote locations and or remote offices. This alone necessitates the need for a programme that is adaptable for this new way of work.
I you work on an Apple product for instance, your mail application in the MacBook or iPad would be suitable as most of your items sync via the iCloud and gets stored there if you have it setup to also be accessible offline.
You would still however need the right application for you irrespective of your Operating System (OS). You get programmes like, Thunderbird, Mailspring, Sulpheed, Mailbird, eM Client or the more popular Gmail , Microsoft Outlook, Windows live Mail and many more to choose from.
They are all free but do they all meet your requirements or needs?
Gmail, or more specifically Google Apps is what I use. Its fast, works instantly, and I mean instantly on any device, is ever reliable and gives world class Cloud storage. I also love the fact that it works super-fast, and in my opinion is functioning 100% of the time.
If you’re not a Google fan, then Office 365 or good old Outlook is just as good, but gets a bit clunky when it fills up. It’s also nowhere near as fast or compatible as Google Mail.
Gmail to start off with is free and offers load of space which is shared with your google accounts and Google drive. Your searches will automatically exclude any spam or trash folder items and only search for relevant items.
You can even access your mail when you are offline and it will sync (download and upload mail) again when you are back online. So without going into too many technical details, I think it is clear why Gmail has a lot of benefits for my business.
I usually start off the first hour of my day with analysing my mailbox and prioritising important Emails in my mailbox or by responding to mails that came in after I left the day before (o yes, I removed emails from my mobile phone to establish clear work life balance).
I also remove any spam or irrelevant mails to my business. Once my mailbox is up to date I can focus on the revenue generating business and work that is important.
Emails will never go away and will never be less at any given time but I overcome this by spending 15-30 min of an hour checking and updating my mails with feedback to clients and filtering responses or drafting new mails. I also ensure that once I am done with an email that I archive it immediately to prevent any clutter in my inbox.
By the end of a business day, I usually spend 30 Minutes clearing up my mailbox and ensure that all my priority or urgent mails have been answered and then archived. I also ensure that I clear up any mails that are no longer required in my mailbox and unsubscribe to any spam mails to ensure tomorrow I will start fresh.
As mentioned, having an early morning regime tends to set the tone for my day where I get rid of admin and then shift focus to operations. Then to wind down, doing emails at the end of the day allows me to decompress and check if I missed anything. In this manner your day is planned and much more constructive without being distracted by Emails every five minutes.
If you’re like me, you’ll probably be saying a lot of the same stuff, think how long it takes to write all those emails every time. Start building up some templates.
Templates are a great way to cut down on typing Emails from scratch as in most cases you will deal with the same kind of matter or a standard response to certain matters. You just need to edit the body in terms of relevance to the party you are responding to.
I also label emails and categorize them between personal, business and priority mails.
Lastly, I love Keyboard shortcuts. It speeds up responses and filing of mails instead of clicking on icons all the time. You can find most of these shortcuts and set them up in your settings. It takes some getting used to, but once you have them under your belt, its great!
I hope I freed up some time in your day and that this will help channel your potential to things you would normally not have had the time for. It’s also good to keep in mind that we are creatures of habit. If we create good habits, then it will serve us well in the long run. Happy Emailing.
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