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How to Breeze Through Your Email Every Day

Episode Summary

Are you:

Struggling with email overload?

Tired of dealing with dozens or even hundreds of pieces of email every day?

Having a hard time getting work done because you are trapped in email hell?

There is a solution to this productivity-killing problem.

The solution lies in how you prioritize your email.

Listen to this episode of The Valtimax Podcast for a successful email management system that will free you up to focus on the things that are important in your life.

Want all the Valtimax Podcasts at your fingertips? Visit our podcast directory:

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Transcript

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http://www.ValtimaxInnerCircle.com

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Happy New Year!

This is the time of year when many people resolve to make some kind of huge change in their life or in their business.

Maybe you want to start a new diet.

Maybe you want to go to the gym every day.

Maybe your goal is to double your monthly income by the end of the year.

These noble intentions often lead to huge disappointment and become disincentives.

Why?

Because it’s too much change at one time.

Humans are not wired for dramatic behavioral modification.

What we can do is change our behavior on an incremental basis over the long term.

This means you should make a small change, each day.

That’s it.

One small change.

Daily.

Here’s an example:

If you want to do business with a Fortune 500 company, here is what your weekly activity should look like:

Monday:  Do Internet research and find the names of five people in that company who can benefit from the value you provide.

Tuesday:  Call all five and ask for an appointment to meet with them.   (If you get their voice mail, do not leave a message).

Wednesday-Friday: Call the people you have not yet reached.

Repeat this with a new company each week keeping the previous company’s targets on your list.

Obviously, this is a generic example, but you get the idea.

Small steps will eventually lead to big results and you will feel better about yourself in the process.

Here is another resource you will find helpful as you continue on your journey toward continuous improvement:

Seven Strategies to Double Your Revenue in 2013

Is it possible to double your revenue in 2013?  Sure it is but you need to make a concerted effort, each and every day toward that goal.

This audio podcast will give you some guidance and inspiration toward making a big impact on your revenue and income.

Listen to it right now.

Click here:  Seven Strategies to Double Your Revenue in 2013

Best wishes for a happy and successful day, week and year.

There are many people looking to monopolize your time and attention.

How do you decide in whom to invest?

This decision is as important, if not more important than a financial investment.

Time is all you have.  You can spend it with your family and friends.  You can spend it with a business associate, making money.  You can spend it unwinding and recharging your personal batteries.

How you choose to spend your time is up to you and it is the single factor that differentiates those business leaders who are successful from those who flounder.

In business, I invest my time with serious people.

This does not mean they are all devoid of a sense of humor.  Quite the contrary.  Most of the people I work with have a sharp wit.

But all are serious about one thing – the respect they have for others.

Why is this important?

It’s important because all good relationships are built on a foundation of mutual respect.   You must first respect someone before you can trust him.

Over the years I have developed some cues that help me evaluate a person’s business intent.  I use these at the outset of a relationship to determine if I will invest my time, my attention and my expertise in someone seeking my assistance.

Here are five of those cues:

Dress Like a Pro

Serious businesspeople look the part.

If you are a lifeguard, shorts, a tee shirt and flip-flops are appropriate.  Everyone else needs to look like they are worthy of an investment of money – but more importantly – an investment of time and attention.

Dress up for a first meeting.  You may occasionally feel foolish wearing a business suit but you can always take off the tie and jacket if you are clearly overdressed.

Speak Like a Trusted Advisor

Your goal is to provide useful information, help people make decisions, and motivate them to take action.

Make complicated concepts seem simple and don’t use jargon.  Making people comfortable with you is the first step in earning their trust.  Do this by treating EVERYONE as a peer.

Keep the language family friendly.  Intelligent people can come up with alternatives to profanity – even when they are emotional.

Organize your Writing

The way you write is the way you think.

If your writing follows a logical pattern, your thoughts follow a logical pattern.  Everything you write matters.  Make sure you review your email before you send it.

Keep an Open Mind

One of the hallmarks of a serious businessperson is his willingness to listen to opposing points of view.  Strong, self-assured leaders can listen to people with whom they disagree and, in some cases, compromise.

The world is full of stubborn people who think they know everything.  Be unique.  Welcome opposing points of view.

Respect Time

Keep your appointments.  Arrive on time.  Stick to the agenda. Finish as scheduled.  I can learn more about you from the way you manage your schedule than I can from interviewing twenty of your closest friends.

If you do not respect your own time, you certainly will not respect my time.

Seriously…

You may not agree with me on some of these points.  In fact, you may not agree with me on any of them.  That’s up to you.   But for me, these five factors are nonnegotiable.

What do you think?  Should I take you seriously?

Here are some other resources you should review:

Want to Make the Most Out of the 24 Hours in Your Day?

The latest podcast on our website will help you maximize your productivity.  Click on the link below to listen.  You’ll find it to be the best time investment you’ve made this week.

Valtimax Radio: More, Better, Faster: Easy Ways to Boost Your Productivity

The Secret of The Action Log

This little gem helped one client double his productivity in just a few short weeks.  Most people focus on a “to do” list.  We advise our clients to focus on actions and create an action log.

Watch this two and a half minute video and implement its recommendations today.  You will turbo-charge your productivity.

Valtimax Video:  The Secret of the Action Log

Power Productivity Video Series: Video 5 – The Secret of the Action Log

Summary

Most people think “to do” lists are the key to effective productivity.  That’s not the case.  The real secret to improved productivity is tracking and reviewing the actions you take each and every day.  You see, tracking actions brings your activity into focus.  What you focus on determines your results.

Watch this video and track your actions.  You will be amazed at the results.

Below are the links to the other videos in the Power Productivity Video Series:

Video 1: Tame the Ringing Telephone

Video 2: Better Scheduling Means Better Work

Video 3: Defeat Email Overload

Video 4: Kill Off Drop-By Meetings

Subscribe

Have these videos delivered directly to your inbox each week on Friday morning. Fill in the form below to subscribe now.

Transcript

I’m Dave Lorenzo of Valtimax Consulting and today we’re going to talk about the one tip that can help you almost double your productivity overnight and this is a tip that I’ve given to my clients for years and years and each and every single one of them have found it to be totally effective as long as they make it a habit in their daily routine.

The tip that I’m talking about is creating what I call an action log. That’s actually writing down the actions that you’ve taken no matter how large or small each and every single day. You need to maybe take a couple of timeouts during the course of your day and just write down the things that you’ve accomplished during that day and then spend 15 minutes at the end of the day reviewing the things that you got done.

At the end of your week, you should review all the things that you did, all the actions that you took during the course of the week and at the end of a month, review all the actions that you took during the course of the month. What this does is it psychologically primes you to be an action-oriented person. You will find that you strive to get more and more done during the course of the day because you’re actually logging the things that you’ve accomplished.

When you do this, you will notice that you start to accomplish more and more. It is a type of mentality that you’re creating with yourself. You’re almost fooling yourself into being more productive and this follows the psychological principle that the more we focus on something, the more it expands. So if you’re focused on action, you will take more action.

Now how do you make sure you’re taking the right action? Well, at the beginning of each week, you should set up a number of goals for outcomes that you want to accomplish during the course of that week. How many? It’s up to you. I would say having two or three a day makes the most sense. So if you have three items that you want to accomplish each and every single day, three things you want to accomplish each and every single day, that gives you 15 things to accomplish each week. Pick three. Accomplish them each day and then keep an action log of each of the things that you do during the course of your day.

This is a phenomenal way to boost your productivity. Implement this today and you will be amazed at how much your productivity improves not only today but this week, this month and even this year.

My name is Dave Lorenzo and the name of our company is Valtimax Consulting. I look forward to seeing you in our next Valtimax video. Have a great day.

Power Productivity Video Series: Video 4 – Kill Off Drop-By Meetings

Summary

This video provides you with the solution to one of the most annoying productivity killers in every workplace today.  That killer is the drop-by meeting.  It is perpetrated by just about everyone who works with you.

Want to stop the drop-by meeting?

Watch this video.

Below are the links to the other videos in the Power Productivity Video Series:

Video 1: Tame the Ringing Telephone

Video 2: Better Scheduling Means Better Work

Video 3: Defeat Email Overload

Video 5: The Secret of the Action Log

Subscribe

Have these videos delivered directly to your inbox each week on Friday morning. Fill in the form below to subscribe now.

Transcript

My name is Dave Lorenzo and this is the fourth video in our Productivity Series.

Today we’re going to talk about people who drop by. We’re going to talk about the office drop-by or the client or patient drop-by, people who just happen to pop in and they want to see you and ask you a couple of questions. I absolutely hate this because any professional practice can absolutely not take walk-ins.

You’re not a hairdresser. You’re a lawyer. You’re not a hairdresser. You’re a doctor. So people who walk in and want to see you on the spur of the moment are not going to be the best patients or clients. So I don’t think you should take walk-ins at any time. I think anybody who walks into your office and expects to see you should be told that the next available appointment is tomorrow at 2:00 PM or whenever your next available appointment is and then folks can schedule an appointment.

Your administrative staff can schedule an appointment for the person who walked in to see you at a later date or time. If you’re worried about losing that patient, if you’re worried about losing that client in the moment, then I will tell you that that’s a sign that you don’t have a significant enough marketing effort because if your marketing is robust, your patient roster, your client schedule will be full at least 24 hours in advance and you won’t be able to accept walk-ins no matter what.

Let’s talk briefly about how you would handle pop-ins if you’re an executive or a business owner and you have employees who pop in to see you all the time and they say, “Hey, you got a minute? I just want to talk about these one or two things with you.”

Those are completely unacceptable and they’re absolute productivity killers. Here’s how I recommend you handle those folks. What you do is you schedule standing meetings with each member of your team. Now the bigger your team, the more meetings you’re going to have to have but in this case, these meetings will prevent a lot of the pop-ins that you see.

The standing meetings can be weekly or they can be biweekly and what you do is you have an agenda set in advance and you ask the employee who pops in a lot to send you the agenda in advance. You cover those items on the agenda and then you end the meeting.

Now you can also schedule “pop-in time” for you while you’re in your office. What this means is that you simply have one or two hours during the day that you designate. Maybe one hour in the morning from 10:00 to 11:00, one hour in the afternoon from 3:00 to 4:00 when you sit in your office on the edge of your desk and the employees just parade in and out and they fire questions at you one at a time, one after another.

This is the way to handle employee pop-in meetings so that you can be more productive during the course of the day.

Power Productivity Video Series: Video 3 – Defeat Email Overload

Summary

If you don’t hate email, you should.  It is killing your productivity.

This video provides you with one solution to your email overload.  You don’t have to implement all of it and you don’t have to agree with all of it.

But I can guarantee it is better than what you are doing now.

Watch this video and give it a try.

Below are the links to the other videos in the Power Productivity Video Series:

Video 1: Tame the Ringing Telephone

Video 2: Better Scheduling Means Better Work

Video 4: Kill Off Drop-By Meetings

Video 5: The Secret of the Action Log

Subscribe

Have these videos delivered directly to your inbox each week on Friday morning. Fill in the form below to subscribe now.

Transcript

I’m Dave Lorenzo with Valtimax Consulting and this is the third video in our Productivity Series and I’m going to talk today about the overall email overload that all of us experience. It’s almost impossible to keep up with the email that we get each and every single day.

Even those of us who are fastidious about going through our inbox and deleting items, we can still go to a meeting or spend a half day at a seminar or spend all day with clients or with patients and we come back and we find that our inbox is inundated with dozens, if not hundreds of emails.

So how do you deal with them all? Well, here’s my method for going through email. The first thing you do when you sit down at your email inbox is you scan your email for any emails that have urgent client needs or urgent patient needs. So if you’re a lawyer and you’re working on matters currently for three different clients who are in your email inbox, those are the first emails that you will look at and respond to.

If you’re a doctor and you’re waiting for test results, you go through your email inbox and you look for the test results related to those specific patients. If you’re a business executive and you’re waiting for an answer on a project or on a contract that you’re negotiating, you go through the inbox and you look for those emails first.

Other than that, take the emails one at a time as they come. Open them. Read them and if you can, respond to them immediately and then delete them or file them and move on.

Now, if the response is going to take a longer period of time or it needs some sort of research, you should flag that email and come back to it at a later date. I know this flies in the face of a lot of productivity gurus who will tell you only touch something once but you can get bogged down in answering just one or two emails and not get through the rest of your inbox.

Our goal in this email section is just to get through the inbox and get rid of all the junk and the crap that we don’t need. As you go through your emails, if there are things you believe that are important but not urgent, flag those. If there are things that are neither important nor urgent, delete those. If there are things in your email inbox that are urgent but not important, you should delegate those. Forward those on to someone else in your company, in your firm, who can handle them.

Again, they’re urgent but they’re not important to you, forward those on to somebody who can handle them immediately. If you don’t have anyone else in your firm or in your company or in your medical practice who can handle those urgent but not important emails, then deal with them in the moment. Hopefully you can bang them out quickly.

Finally, there are emails that are in there that you think to yourself, “Hmm, it would be nice to respond to this someday,” or “It would be nice to come back to this,” or this person may or may not want a response or they’ve just copied you on something as a “FYI”. Those are the emails that you put in a special folder marked “clean out”. You put them in a folder marked “clean out” with the month and the date and you will leave them there and if nobody calls you about that email item, you don’t have to ever worry about responding to it. You’re basically giving yourself permission to ignore that email. Believe me when I tell you that if someone sends you an email and it goes for three days without anyone calling you to ask for a response, that email was unimportant and it can just be discarded.

So, recapping the email strategy. Go through all your emails, skimming them, looking for urgent and important issues. Address them immediately. Then next go through your batch of emails looking for important issues that are not urgent. Flag those. Come back to them later when you schedule an email session to actually answer those emails.

Then the emails that are not important and not urgent, move them to your clean out folder and eventually delete them and then emails that are urgent but not overwhelmingly important to you, forward them to somebody else. Delegate them so they can be done by someone else in the future.

My name is Dave Lorenzo. The name of our company is Valtimax Consulting and we help you make a great living and live a great life®. Until next time, bye-bye.

Power Productivity Video Series: Video 2 – Better Scheduling Means Better Work

Summary

Most people know what to do and they want to do it.  Then something happens and external forces put pressure upon us.  When that happens, bedlam ensues.  Your schedule gets co-opted and someone else controls your productivity.

This video will help you discover how to take back control of your work agenda.

Below are the links to the other videos in the Power Productivity Video Series:

Video 1: Tame the Ringing Telephone

Video 3: Defeat Email Overload

Video 4: Kill Off Drop-By Meetings

Video 5: The Secret of the Action Log

Subscribe

Have these videos delivered directly to your inbox each week on Friday morning. Fill in the form below to subscribe now.

Transcript

This is Dave Lorenzo and I’m the Chairman and Founder of Valtimax Consulting and this is the second video in our Productivity Series and today we’re going to talk about scheduled appointment times.

One of the biggest mistakes I see professionals and business leaders making each and every single day is that they have unscheduled appointments on their calendar. What I mean by unscheduled appointments is they have a start time but they don’t have an end time. When you schedule an appointment with someone whether they’re a client or whether it’s someone with whom you’re working or even if it’s patient appointments and you’re a doctor in a medical office, you should have start times and end times for each of those appointments.

The reason for a start time and an end time is twofold. Number one, it sends a psychological message to yourself that you have a start time and an end time and it forces you to be very concise and focused and stick to the agenda. It forces you to be very concise and focused and handle the issues in front of you and do them in an efficient and effective way.

The second reason for a start time and an end time is let the person with whom you’re meeting know that there is an end time to this appointment. We’re not here to ramble on. We have a structured appointment set up and there’s a start time and an end time and you’re respectful of that not only for your own sake but for the sake of the people with whom you’re meeting.

So, all of your meetings should have a start time and an end time and you should adhere to them. Now the question comes up. What happens if we get to the end time and we’re not finished with the items that we had to cover? Well, each meeting should have no more than three bullet point agenda items on which you are going to conduct a meeting. These are the items you’re going to talk about in the meeting. Every meeting should be no longer than 50 minutes. So you cover these three things in a maximum of 50 minutes. If you have more items than that, quite frankly you’re going to need to break these meetings up into multiple meetings.

Now, you’re asking me how I came up with a 50-minute meeting. Well I’m going to tell you that the average human’s attention span is eight minutes. So if we’re thinking about an appropriate time for a meeting especially if there’s travel involved or if you have to coordinate multiple people’s schedules, we’re going to want a significant amount of time to get at least these three agenda items covered. So 50 minutes should be enough for that to cover those three agenda items.

Now why do we pick only three agenda items? Because anything more than three will allow too much information to expand into the timeframe allotted. So three agenda items in 50 minutes. There is no real rhyme or reason for the number three but it’s a great place to start. So cover three agenda items in a 50-minute meeting. If you can cover it in less than 50 minutes, even better.

Adhere to these scheduling tips and you will be very happy you did. So your meetings will be far more productive and you will be able to get more done in less time. My name is Dave Lorenzo and the name of our company is Valtimax Consulting and until next time, I hope you make a great living and live a great life®.

Power Productivity Video Series: Video 1 – Tame The Ringing Telephone

Summary

The phone is a necessary work tool.

But you need to ask yourself: “Do I control my use of the telephone or is the telephone controlling me?”

If you answer it honestly, you’ll need to learn how to take control of the plethora of inbound calls that bog you down.

If you want to get off the phone and get some work done, you need to watch this video.

Below are the links to the other videos in the Power Productivity Video Series:

Video 2: Better Scheduling Means Better Work

Video 3: Defeat Email Overload

Video 4: Kill Off Drop-By Meetings

Video 5: The Secret of the Action Log

Subscribe

Have these videos delivered directly to your inbox each week on Friday morning. Fill in the form below to subscribe now.

Transcript

I’m Dave Lorenzo and I’m the Chairman and Founder of Valtimax Consulting and I’ve created this video series to help provide you with some tips and strategies for not only managing your professional practice or your business but also for managing your work-life balance and in the next series of videos, we’re really going to focus on improving personal productivity.

My goal is to help you get more done in the same amount of time or more done in less time so that you can make a great living and live a great life®.

Today what we’re going to talk about is the annoying sound of the ringing telephone. That’s right. All of us as professionals, as business executives have been faced with the challenge of managing the amount of inbound calls, managing the amount of people who want to get in touch with us and want really a piece of us each and every single day.

One of the biggest productivity tips that I learned at an early age as a corporate executive and later as a professional was that answering an inbound phone call was something that would absolutely kill my personal productivity. If you think about it, your phone rings probably dozens, if not hundreds of times each and every single day. Although you may have caller ID, you have no idea who’s on the other end of that line.

You really don’t know what they’re looking for or how you’re going to be able to help them. The best thing for you to do is to let all inbound calls go to voicemail and then prioritize how you’re going to call those folks back depending upon whether they’re a client or not and whether they have urgency in their current matter or the current issue that you’re facing in your interaction with them.

Now I will grant you that it’s almost impossible to tell why someone is calling you when they leave your voicemail. Most people are not very effective at leaving voicemail messages. What I will tell you is this. You can do one of two things. You can either call these folks back yourself and say, “Hi, Mr. Smith. This is Dave Lorenzo calling and I saw that you left me a voicemail earlier today. I would like to schedule some time for us to talk about your issue. Would you mind telling me what it is?”

Then give them a two or three-minute window of opportunity to tell you what their issue is and then schedule a phone appointment, a telephone appointment to speak with them. This may seem redundant. It may seem like doing double work. Because after all, couldn’t you just answer their question while you were there on the phone with them?

Well, yes you could but that would be an unfocused, longer conversation. If you call them back and you say, “Give me just a bullet point highlight of what you want to talk about and then I will work you into my schedule over the course of the next say 24 hours or by later today,” you are controlling the interaction. That also allows you time to prepare. If you have to get a file and get the file in front of you before you return that call, you’re in much better shape.

Now here’s strategy number two. If you have administrative help in your office, you can have your administrative assistant call the person back and ask them what this topic of conversation will be all about.

This way you can have all the prep work done for you. You can have the assistant give you the file. You can get on the phone and have a scheduled 15-minute conversation with these people. Now, notice I said 15-minute conversation. We never take any inbound calls and we never have unscheduled calls. Every call has a start time and an end time and anything that’s longer than 15 minutes needs to be an appointment that’s booked on your calendar.

We will talk about appointments and how to handle them on your calendar in our next video. Until then, I wish you happy productivity. My name is Dave Lorenzo and I’m the Chairman and Founder of Valtimax Consulting. We will speak with you next time.