Email used to consume my life and leave me unproductive. I used to check 5 different email accounts a day. Anytime someone sent me an email, I would respond, sometimes within the hour. This set unrealistic expectations, not to mention that I got very little work done as a result.
Ferriss checks email once a week. He understands that this may be difficult for some, so he recommends checking email only twice a day to start. So, in The 4-Hour Workweek fashion, I streamlined.
- I forwarded my yahoo account to my Gmail account, since Gmail handles spam alot better.
- I created helpme at caprica.ca and updated all my webpages so that support emails and business inquiries go there. This is the email that my virtual assistant checks. I put together a list of commonly asked questions with my responses that she copies and pastes as a reply. This has helped to decrease the number of tire-kickers and increase my level of productivity.
- For the other 2 email addresses, both caprica, one I give out only to clients, family and friends which I check twice a day. The other one is used only for domain name management and when I sign up for affiliate programs. That means I check this one sporadically.
It’s been difficult to maintain this rule of only checking Gmail once a day. Often I feel tempted, but I’ve been pretty good. I also set up an autoresponder that lets people know that I check my email around 2:30pm ET each day. Here’s the exact language:
Hi there, thanks for sending your email. I’m completing a few deadlines for my clients and my publisher. Because of this, I check email once a day at 2:30pm EST (New York time), Monday to Friday.
If you need me to respond to something before this time, call me toll-free at 1-866-324-6344. Otherwise, I’ll reply to your email around 2:30pm ET weekdays only.
If you need a crash course on podcasting, check out my FAQ page at https://leesareneehall.com/faqs as I’ve listed a ton of awesome resources there.
If you’d like to schedule me for a podcast, blog or media interview, send a quick email to helpme@caprica.ca and Terry Green, my assistant, will gladly help you.
Would you believe I’m getting less emails now? I find this interesting. So, my questions to you:
- How many emails accounts do you check a day?
- How can you streamline your email so you check it less?
- What advice can you give to those who are slaves to their email?
- What spam blockers are you using that have helped eliminate spam?
- Do you find that email newsletters are still effective? Are you even reading them?
I have nine accounts from five different domains that I check twice a day in Thunderbird (running on Linux). I have set up filters to separate mails into different folders and when pressed for time, I look at the two most important folders where I receive emails from friends/family and clients.
I also check my Yahoo! Mail, HotMail and GMail accounts…but not as often.
I’m excited about ‘4-hour workweek’ ideas too. However I think that some things are exaggerated, but some of them are very true. You need to read the book to actually understand what Tim wanted to say with ‘4-hour workweek’. Because I was skeptical when I first read the title.
By the way you can listen to ‘4-hour workweek’ presentation from SXSW 2007. Here is the link:
http://audio.sxsw.com/podcast/interactive/panel/2007/SXSW07.INT.20070312.TheFourHourWorkweek.mp3
As for email, I have 3 email accounts that I check regularly. And the best advice I learned about email is: “Don’t check your email first thing in the morning. Complete several important tasks first.”
And for RSS reader I use Netvibes. It shows the titles of posts, so you can easier concentrate on what you want to read. Although skipping posts in Google Reader with ‘j’ works too.