TheBisch

As often as I disagree with the things Bob Parsons of Godaddy says and does, the other day, he posted a message on his blog about he saves some time by not being so “polite”.

For the past few months I’ve been saving time and headaches by managing my email box. I divided my inbox into “Action”, “Hold”, “Projects”, “Waiting”. I read each email as I get it and either reply to it right away, or copy it into one of those four folders. Action - Things I need to take physical action on; Hold - Things are not of major importance and can wait until the end of the day; Projects - Emails related to projects I’m working on right now and I’ll need quick access to this information shortly; Waiting - Emails where I am waiting for someone else to get their butt in gear and do something before I can respond. All other emails are responded to immediately or stored in my Archive, where I have a folder for each employee in my workgroup.

Every day I go through the four folders in my inbox first thing in the morning, right after lunch, and just before I leave for the day. I don’t set my email program to automatically check for email. I manually check it at the same time I’m checking my folders. This way I’m not constantly distracted by email coming in over the course of the day.

I think I’m going to incorporate Bob’s take on the voicemails and phone calls the same way. I have a couple of people at the office who always ask for me, even though there are other employees that work for me who are fully capable of answering the questions (maybe not as quick as me, but they are capable). These people are the largest waste of my time over the course of the day, which adds to my stress level. My hope is that I can train them not to rely on me all the time, and allow my employees to answer their questions.

I also have the constant “stranger” caller problem… I’m definitely looking forward to using the “Get to the point” message…

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