New Email Strategy
This week I’m changing how I check email. I’ll check email twice a day, around 10am after I’ve finished one or two tasks that relate to my highest priorities. I’ll check again around 4pm before I’m “done” for the day. This allows me to handle any last minute items that crop up before my work day ends.
As a stay-at-home dad, my work schedule is anything but traditional or normal. I work when I want to and hang out with the kids more than anything. So these times for checking email aren’t etched in stone or on my Google Calendar. The standard I will attempt to maintain is to check once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Because I often work at night after the kids have gone to bed and I’ve spent some quality time with my wife, I’m sure I will probably check email a third time. This third time is only because I’d hate to work on a project late at night and find out the next morning there was an email waiting which negated my efforts.
Here are some of the questions I’ll be working through this week and my initial attempts to mitigate:
- What if someone really needs to get in touch with me and they only have my email address?
I’ll use an autoresponder to let folks know I’m only checking email a couple of times a day. The email will contain a link to the AwayFind.com service. A person can fill out their information online and I’ll receive a text message that someone needs to speak with me. - What about my phone? It’s so easy to check email there and “cheat”.
Most of what I’ll be using my phone for is text messages. These short, real-time conversations are much more useful than emails in my opinion. If I need to talk with a person who is texting me, I’ll know if they’re available for a call and we can hash things out with a quick call. I’ve had push alerts turned off on my phone for a while now and I’ll try removing the mail icon from the bottom icon bar. If I have to scroll to the last page to find the mail, I’m less likely to just click the Mail icon out of habit. - What about the folks I send an email to and am waiting on a response to that may be time sensitive?
This will require some discipline on my part. I have to remember in the email to request the person to call my Google Voice number and leave a message if I don’t pick up. Or to send me a text message with the answer. - Since I keep a lot of my project materials in my GMail account, how do I access them without getting sucked into the Inbox?
I use Google Desktop on my machines and have it set to index my Gmail account. When I search Google Desktop, the emails are included in the results and only the emails I open are viewable. There is no view of the Inbox or a count of unread messages. This makes it easier to focus on the emails I’m searching for and not be concerned about what’s sitting unread in the Inbox. - Am I not trading emails for text messages and voice mails?
This could very well happen. I’m comfortable trading text messages for emails initially because of the real-time nature. If I find I’m being interrupted with SMS alerts consistently, I’ll tweak my approach as needed.
If you’d like to learn more about managing your Inbox and some recommended steps you can take to get things under control, here are some good resources:
I’ll update at the end of the week with results from this email test strategy.
Upcoming…
