Don’t Let Technology Be Your Enabler
Recently I handed over two personal/business email accounts over to an assistant. Keep in mind that I already have someone answering support emails and handling customer service. None of these emails had any support issues unless our customer support assistant couldn’t resolve the issue.
Most of the emails in these two accounts were subscriptions, friends, interview requests, alerts and stuff like that.
I spent one week recording myself as I went through my inbox. Narrating my thought process on each email. My assistant reviewed them, asked a few questions and we’re all set.
One thing I noticed however is… I don’t need all those alerts. Neither does she since I’m paying her to review them. I’m not talking about Google Alerts and stuff like that – we will discuss that a tad later. What I’m talking about are: Forum reply notifications. That was a biggie. I had no idea I was getting so many of those and only from one or two forums where I co-coach at. Wow.
Then there were comment reply alerts. There are two types. The ones you get when you check that box to notify you of replies on other peoples’ blog – junk them. You really don’t need to know and they suck up your time like crazy.
The second type are the ones that come from your own blogs – I used to think this is important. I mean people say you should be responding to your blog comments regularly right?
That is true. You should to keep the connection. But I think you don’t have to respond the very minute after someone comments. Instead, schedule a time into your week where you do visit your blog to respond to comments.
Back to Google Alerts. What I’ve done so far is automatically archive and label them in Gmail. But think this will change soon. You gotta admit, there’s a lot of junk in these alerts. I’ll be training my assistant to review these for me to spot anything interesting or important. You can also subscribe to search phrases via RSS. Something I’ve done myself. But still think this is something I can outsource.
What unnecessary time gobbling alerts do you have that you could shave off?
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Ya’ know what — I am tempted to pass on 2 of my emails off to a VA just so that I don’t have to be bothered with a lot of the things you mentioned. I think most of what I need to shave off is the *Spam* Ugh.
Next would be the message board alerts that you spoke of in your post and the yahoo groups that I’ve joined. I have managed to get the yahoo groups down to a daily message but I am contimplating stopping that and looking at the groups online.
I think a part of me is always afraid that I will *Miss* something but when I look at all of my messages, unfortunately only 50% of it contain information that I actually NEED.
Great Topic
Ya’ know what — I am tempted to pass on 2 of my emails off to a VA just so that I don’t have to be bothered with a lot of the things you mentioned. I think most of what I need to shave off is the *Spam* Ugh.
Next would be the message board alerts that you spoke of in your post and the yahoo groups that I’ve joined. I have managed to get the yahoo groups down to a daily message but I am contimplating stopping that and looking at the groups online.
I think a part of me is always afraid that I will *Miss* something but when I look at all of my messages, unfortunately only 50% of it contain information that I actually NEED.
Great Topic
There’s a checkbox in the backend under Options -> Discusion. the headign says “Email me whenever:” uncheck the box that says “Anyone posts a comment”.
There’s a checkbox in the backend under Options -> Discusion. the headign says “Email me whenever:” uncheck the box that says “Anyone posts a comment”.
Hey Aurelia – yes the missing out part is the one that causes the most stress. But I think a lot of it also has to do with letting things go. You could also outsource it 😉
Andrea! LOL how silly of me. I should’ve known that doh! Sometimes looking too far into the other parts make me forget the basic of WP features. Thanks for reminding me.
Hey Aurelia – yes the missing out part is the one that causes the most stress. But I think a lot of it also has to do with letting things go. You could also outsource it 😉
Andrea! LOL how silly of me. I should’ve known that doh! Sometimes looking too far into the other parts make me forget the basic of WP features. Thanks for reminding me.