by johndilbeck » Mon Jul 14, 2008 4:28 am
I agree; if there is a major task to be completed, do it before checking email, twitter, or anything else that can be distracting.
Normally, I spend about two hours per day working on email. In general, I get about 300 emails per day and I go through them using my webmail app to delete all the ones that aren't relevant.
Then, I download the rest into Eudora and start going through them. I have about 100 programmed inboxes and the emails are filtered as they download. Some of the inboxes are high priority and I respond to them first. Then I work down through them by priority level.
High priority would be current customers, and new business; medium would be reply notices from forum threads and similar items such as new followers on Twitter. Low priority are any emails that aren't filtered into higher priority inboxes.
If I don't have time to deal with all of them, at least the highest priority messages are handled.
I change priority level on inboxes as my business priorities change. What was a high priority last year may be low priority this year, and vice versa.
When I finish working on email, I don't think about it again until later in the day.
Normally, I check email around 5:00 am and again around 8:00 pm. (I don't work all that time!)
Act on your dream!
JD