Taking Care of Email
Email is one of my distractions. My desk sits in front of a window where I look out to my front yard and the leaves that remain from last fall. On my right is a chair stacked with winter coats and snow suits from my neighbor for my youngest daughter.
My dog has graciously deposited hair around the house. The sink has dishes and the toilet in the master bath needs some new innards.
But I don’t find those AS distracting as email.
Here are a few tips to keep the email monster at bay (both the distraction AND the pile up!)
1. Turn off that sneaky notification that “You’ve Got Mail” - Except if you still have Tom Hank’s sultry voice. Just knowing you have email delivered can be enough to cause you to zip over and take a look.
2. Do you love to read your email? Then use it as a reward. When you’ve finished a specific amount of time working or met a specific goal then head over to the email box and spend 10 minutes on your distraction.
3. If you can’t keep track of the time while reading through email then set an alarm on your desktop. You can use this alarm to keep you on task while working, time your breaks or let your family know when you’re available to be disturbed.
4. If email is more of a distraction than a passion then set aside 15 minutes first thing when you sit to work and again at the end to clean up the emails that come through. Leaving email until the end of the day will increase your productivity. When was the last time you read an email, clicked over to a site and got lost surfing online?
5. Set up your email client to segregate your email for you. You can have one folder for personal communication, one for partnerships, one for e-zines/newsletters and one for customers. It may take a few minutes to set up the rules but you’ll save time in the long run. You can address the tasks in each folder individually and much more quickly.
6. Talk with your service provider about setting up a spam folder on webmail so those pesky emails about length, breadth and depth don’t reach the desktop - ever.
7. Try to clean out the inbox at least once weekly so you don’t feel swamped by the amount of information you’ve yet to read.
8. Unsubscribe from all e-zines and newsletters that you don’t read or that don’t deliver good information.
I’ll have to admit I’ve done all of these - except #1 - and it has cut my time checking mail considerably.
I wish I could do #1 but I keep searching for Tom Hanks 
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My Email Swamp
These past two weeks have been such a blessing in our home. The kids are on vacation from not only school (and I love that since I’m the teacher!) but also basketball, voice and piano lessons. The driving in January usually kills me and this years basketball and vocal schedule looks to be no different.
So I took the last couple of days from last week to relax with the kids and do just some writing while working. And today, what I’m left with, is an email SWAMP. I actually have close to 100 emails that have been breezed through but which I want to read or respond to.
Usually I go through them at the end of the day and keep up. But it’s kind of like laundry - ignore it for a couple of days and it gets overwhelming.
There is that delete button . . . but that only works for the emails about Viagra, Cialis and other such spam.
My New Year’s Resolution from last year - to clear out the ezines and newsletters that I don’t read - I’ve kept. Maybe I need another New Year’s Resolution - I’ll bet a new computer would solve the problem - don’t you think?
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Friday Fun 8 - This Young Man Has Unbelievable Talent
When I was visiting my sister for Thanksgiving and she showed me a video of a 15 year old who has a voice that shouldn’t be coming from a mouth full of braces. He has an incredible talent.
Its a 2 1/2 minute video of pure fun! If you like him you might want to check out the rest of their music - lots loaded on You Tube. Watch the eyes and faces of the orchestra and the audience - just too much fun!
P.S. Caledonia, Ireland’s Call and Lauren and I are all great to listen to while working
Topics: Friday Fun | No Comments »