Is Email Ruining Your Life?

Jim Edwards here with an update I think you’ll really enjoy…

It’s an article I just wrote for my newspaper column about how to tame the email beast once and for all.

If you spend more than 2 hours a *week* on email, this article was meant for you!

This runs in my newspaper column tomorrow, but you get the "scoop" today

To your success,

Jim

PS – By the way, if you’d like to comment on this article, please drop me a line below… I’d love to hear from you!

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Is Email Ruining Your Life?

      – by Jim Edwards

© Jim Edwards – All Rights reserved
    http://www.thenetreporter.com
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Recently I started reading a book with a seemingly
improbable title, "The 4-Hour Workweek" by Timothy Ferris.

In the book, Ferris makes a number of assertions about how
we all, whether employed or self-employed, can work less and
enjoy life more through leverage.

He makes some excellent points and I’d encourage you to read
the book.

A couple of pages in the book, however, caused me to re-
think one specific activity I engage in on an almost hourly
basis -email!

Though I’ve tried to "tame" the email tiger in the past, I
always seem to slide back into the habit of whacking the
"send / receive" button every 15 minutes and getting side
tracked.

But, this book reminded me that I really need to start
living (again) by the "5 Golden Rules" I suggest for
everyone else.

Rule #1 – Only Check Email Twice Daily

It amazes me how many people tell me they go out of town or
on vacation and only check email once daily and the world
keeps on turning.

If you can do it on vacation, why can’t you do it at home?

Only check email two times daily.

I’ve chosen 12:00 noon and 4:00 p.m. as my times and plan to
cut that down to just once a day at 4:00 within the next 60
days.

Rule #2 – Separate Business and Personal

Operate with a different email box for both your business
and personal email.

This keeps personal crisis from spilling over into business
and vice versa.

That way if you must "cheat" a little because of a special
project, you reduce your chances of getting derailed with an
email that could have waited if you never saw it.

Rule #3 – Eliminate Customer Support Email

Never handle customer support via email, especially if you
handle your own customer support.

Always route every bit of customer support through a help
desk system that tracks each "ticket" and communication with
the customer.

Also, this enables you to manage people’s expectations about
when they’ll receive a reply since you can place hours of
operation on a help desk.

Rule #4 – Not Every Email Warrants Response

Somewhere along the line, many of us adopted the belief that
every email message needs a response from us.

NO!

If an email needs to get deleted with no response, do it and
don’t feel guilty about it.

Rule #5 – An Empty In-box Equals Bliss

Never, ever, under any circumstances leave email messages in
you in-box to handle them later.

You won’t handle them later and it just leaves you with a
general sense of uneasiness about leaving things incomplete.

At the end of the day, take one of three actions on every
message in your in-box:

1. Delete it

2. Refer it to someone else

3. File it in an email folder

Supposedly email would make all our lives better, but that
little dream train ran off the tracks for me back in 1997.

Don’t let email dictate everything from your work hours to
your general mood, or even whether you have a "good" day or
not.

Take control of email and use it as a tool, not as an excuse
to feel productive when all you really succeed at is wasting
time.

—-

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-
author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to
work less, get paid more… and have tons more fun!

"The Lazy Man’s Guide to Online Business"

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