Battling the e-mail addiction

[BenKelly]

Hi All,

I'm new here, so firstly I want to say hello. Like many others, this book has been a thunder bolt. It's made me sit up and realise that there is more to life. I read it at a perfect time. I quit my 60hr+ job about six months ago (then they offered me a different role and doubled my pay, so i stayed another month), and have since thrown myself into leading my life the way I've wanted.

I now have a little cottage, work from home 4 days a week (and have a contingency part time job another 2 days a week as a backup). Things are going really well. I'm sure I could stop the part time work (though I actually quite enjoy it), and I'm earning as much as I was before. The trouble was, I've still been aiming for the deferred life idea of getting rich, then retiring.

So now, I find myself comfortably clueless once again. This book has destroyed my long term plans. And that's awesome.

So much for the short intro.

Back to the point of the post. I switched off my auto send/receive on Outlook yesterday, and removed Gmail from my browser homepage. This morning for the first time ever, I've replied to about 20 or 30 e-mails without interruption - and as I was in the flow, and not getting side tracked by constant interruption, I've gotten them all done in record time. (In fact, I found myself getting angry that no-one was writing back, until I realised I'd turned off the auto-receive)!

My question is, how often do people here check e-mail? I'm already finding it liberating that I now do it once every half an hour, when I want to. To those with more experience, how did you find a rhythm that works for you? Do people in a service industry regularly go more than 24hrs without responding?

Ben

[kingfu]

Congrats on getting yourself out the rat race.

But wow, checking email every 30 mins? I check mine about twice a day. A few suggestions regarding email:

Put something in your sig stating how you deal with email, times you check and how anything important should be delt with via the phone. Problem with email is more you send more you're going to recieve, you'll recieve something like 1.5 replies for every email you send. Worrying. Just use the phone and get it over with on a 5 min chat.

Batch your email, i do mine in 30 min chunks.

Remove yourself off any irrrelevent email lists.

I use GTDinbox for gmail. Lets me catagorize my emails on things i need to take action on, reference, to read/review (which i print out in one batch and read elsewhere like a coffee shop)

I read about some guy either on here or another site whose got a script set up to sms him based on the priority of the emails and instructs his clients to put "IMPORTANT" or "URGENT" in the subject line, the script then sms's when he recieves on of these emails.

Im sure theres plenty of others but thats just off teh top of my head.

[sadu]

A lot depends on what industry you are in, but for me the change from 'checking constantly' to 2-3 times a day was all about training my clients.

If they are expecting a reply today, and you don't reply until tomorrow then you are going to piss them off. Before you can reduce to once a day, you need to train your clients so that they don't expect a reply today. If you can reset their expectations, they won't mind getting a reply tomorrow.

How you do this is up to you. I'm the guy with the 'urgent' script mentioned above -it was easy to educate clients because 90% of my email comes from the same 30 or so people. It was easy enough to notify them individually. If you tend to get one-off emails from hundreds of different people, then my approach won't work for you.

The other good piece of advice mentioned above was to unsubscribe from everything. Either that or use filters to automatically delete newsletters. This will take about a month - make sure you religiously unsubscribe from everything before you delete it, and within a month your email volume will be a lot less.

Good luck, take it slow, and do small incremental improvements.

[jackson]

My email addiction has been out of control! It breaks your concentration, I am really looking for emails pertaining to work, or new jobs come in though.

[charliedavis]

I'm still battling this one too. Trouble is much of my work involves me emailing clients so naturally they email back.

I actually now have a VA checking my emails three times a day, although she cannot answer or act on any of the client work so it's really hard to not still check repeatedly myself as well!

[jackson]

wow that's smart. Did you give your VA your password, or do you forward the e-mails?

I run an editing service, I should screen clients by doing a gmail filter to my VA I wouldn't want to give out my password.

[sadu]

It's safe to give your password to your VA. Just set up a few different email addresses, and don't let the highly-sensitive stuff go to the account that the VA is checking.

[TheBSper]

Originally Posted by kingfu

Put something in your sig stating how you deal with email, times you check and how anything important should be delt with via the phone.

That's what I did after I ran into some technical problems with my auto-responder. I'm glad I switched to the signature method though, because from the times my auto-responder did work I could see it getting annoying. If you need a reference for formatting a signature I've added mine to the end of this post.

I haven't been at this very long, but I've discovered two other things that help keep me out of the inbox and on-task:

1) Often I run into the problem where my boss will ask me to e-mail him something I've worked on, and it won't be at one of my set times to check my e-mail. Obviously I want to be able to do this while staying out of the inbox at the same time.

My solution was to use Google Notifier (I'm on a Mac). I've turned off all notifications, but I can use the icon in the taskbar to select "Compose Message," which lets me open a blank e-mail whenever it suits my own priority list, without having to go through my inbox. It also helps with batching e-mail writing, since you can do it whenever you want without worrying about getting caught checking e-mail.

2) If there is an e-mail with information I need to reference for a project, or if I need to wait to reply to an e-mail because I need approval for something from my boss (I haven't gotten around to removing him as a bottleneck yet), I will take a screenshot of the e-mail to my desktop (Command+Shift+4). This lets me close my inbox after going through my e-mails, but allows me to recall whatever I need to from those messages without going back into the den of temptation.

Here's the text I use in my signature to tell people when I reply, hope it helps:

---
In an effort to increase my focus and productivity, I am temporarily only checking e-mail twice a day at 12:00PM ET and 4:00PM ET. If you require urgent assistance (please ensure it is urgent) that cannot wait until either 12:00PM or 4:00PM, please call my cell at (xxx) xxx-4211.

Thank you for understanding my efforts to become more efficient and effective. It helps me accomplish more and be more productive.
--
[CONTACT INFO HERE]

[Avex]

TheBSper, did you ever ran into problems with people realizing that your signature is from the 4hww? How did you deal with that?

[TheBSper]

Originally Posted by Avex

TheBSper, did you ever ran into problems with people realizing that your signature is from the 4hww? How did you deal with that?

Honestly, I only started doing this recently, so I haven't encountered this problem yet. I thought about this a little though, and really two things stuck out to me.

1) Let me start by saying I haven't spent the time researching this, so if I'm wrong I'd love to be corrected. But in my experience, even though the book is wildly popular, books - relative to other major media outlets like TV, Music, Video Games, etc - are not. Most people I know don't read, or don't read that often. The times I've mentioned the book to people in my social and work circles, very few people knew about it, let alone had read it. This is just my experience though, and could be an anomaly.

2) If people have read the book, they typically love it. I know if I got an e-mail with a signature like that, I would immediately identify this person as part of our tribe of lifestyle designers, and want to connect with them more about how to get the most out of less. If anything it would be a good thing, a badge of honor so to speak.

I know we're all supposed to be on the "Low Information Diet," but I personally find that books, in connection with acting on them, have helped me get past obstacles that otherwise would have held me back. For overcoming fear, Robert Greene's "The 50th Law" is absolutely essential in my mind. Don't let the fact that it's co-authored by 50 Cent fool you, it has been a great ally when Fear-Setting.

---EDIT---
Thought a quote from the book might help you see what I'm talking about:

"Instead of a simple, intense fear of something powerful and real, we developed a kind of generalized anxiety. It was as if the thousands of years of feeling fear in the face of nature could not go away⎯we had to find something at which to direct our anxiety, no matter how small or improbable."

Read the book and it will help you break out of this pattern.

(Disclosure: I have no affiliation and do not profit in any way from the sales of "The 50th Law")