Last week, I complained about all this digital noise. I belong and use so many online social media tools that it started to affect my productivity. I was also getting very overwhelmed and burnt out by the constant need to always be “on” everytime I entered cyberspace.

At the insistence of my good friend, Jan Janzen, I listened to a recording of Timothy Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week. He was being interviewed by Yanik Silver.

It was probably one of the most profound recordings I’ve heard in ages. I immediately applied something he talked about to my own business with profound effects. I put an autoresponder on my email that now alerts people that I only check emails twice a day. I encourage people to call my toll-free number if they want to get in touch with me or just wait until I check into my email.

I’ll be honest, since doing this, it’s been a struggle for me to stay away from email. Prior to listening to Timothy, I kept my email open all day long. As soon as a new message came through, I’d stop what I was doing, read it, then reply right away.

This did something detrimental to my business – it set the expectation that I had nothing to do but reply to emails. Plus, it made people expect that I would reply to them within 10-minutes of them sending their email.

This actually cost me a contract earlier this year. I was working with a prospect who I met at a networking event. We had a few sales meetings where I met with his team and finally, I drew up a proposal for my podcasting services.

During this time, I was in my normal mode of answering emails as soon as I saw them. My prospect was getting replies from me within 30-minutes of him sending his emails.

One week, I had quite a number of meetings and it took me 48-hours to answer the prospect’s email. This happened 2 or 3 times during that very busy week. He then sent me an email saying that he was now second guessing my services as I’m no longer responsive. The relationship went south because I didn’t reply to his emails as quickly as I once did.

This taught me a valuable lesson about email. Emails are NOT a conversation, it’s a business tool. Real-time, synchronous conversations are held over the phone, not over email.

Now that I check email only twice a day, my time has freed up. Here are some other things I’ve done to increase productivity:

• I finally hired a virtual assistant and she’s a god sent. I’ve been working with her for the past 3-months and I don’t know why I didn’t hire her sooner.
• I now have a toll-free number that can be checked and answered by anyone on my team. The calls can also be forwarded to one person during office hours who then acts as my receptionist.
• As I enter my office, instead of opening email, I open my Google Reader and catch up on blogs and podcasts. I love Google Reader.
• I now forward all business oppportunity, customer service and support issues through one email address that’s checked by my virtual assistant.
• I no longer keep Skype, MSN, Yahoo, Google Chat and any other IM tool open on my computer 24/7. I open them up when I have free time and this has helped increased my productivity.

I feel that I’m controlling my environment instead of it controlling me. Having the extra pair of hands to help me with everything I’ve got going on is helping me manage my time better. I’ve even found time once again to comment on people’s blogs and listen to podcasts.

My question to you – What have you done to increase productivity? What tools can you suggest?