Comments on: Your Inbox Controls You

By: Agency Byte » Distractions

Agency Byte » Distractions — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:33:15 +0000

[...] you read my recent post entitled Your Inbox Controls You, you’ll be interested in this humorous spoof on Maslow’s hierarchy of [...]

By: Brett Derricott

Brett Derricott — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:07:15 +0000

@Kelli: Thanks for the video link. Combining the ideas of controlling when Inbox gives me new messages and then organizing what I do with those messages is probably the holy grail of sanity!

By: Brett Derricott

Brett Derricott — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:59:31 +0000

@Jennifer: Wow, I’m impressed that you turned in the Crackberry! That has to be liberating but I’m not quite sure I’m ready to give mine up just yet. Baby steps, right?

By: Brett Derricott

Brett Derricott — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:58:23 +0000

@Chris: Love the comment about being in a reactive position. That’s exactly how I feel when I obey Inbox all day long!

By: Jennifer Schafer

Jennifer Schafer — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:36:23 +0000

I recently turned my smart crackberry back into my cell phone provider and opted for a normal 30 dollar phone that gets the job done. The fees have gotten way out of hand and my clients have steadily gone from calling me, to emailing, texting and now they facebook comment me to see if I am even alive if I don’t ‘hit’ them back within 2 minutes.

I said enough! As the owner and sales person for my business, I think this is the wave of the future.

Cheers to this!

By: Kelli

Kelli — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:52:47 +0000

Brett,
Sounds like you might find this presentation by Merlin Mann (of 43 Folders fame) interesting: http://www.43folders.com/izero#video

Believe me, I share your struggles. My only delight, while dealing with nightmarish inbox volume, is the auto-reply I write up each month. Send me an e-mail, and you’ll see what I mean. People love it, and the humor helps them stay patient as I work to get to their message.

Cheering you on,
Kelli

By: chris snyder

chris snyder — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:02:21 +0000

check out chet holmes book, “the ultimate sales machine”. pg 12 is where he starts with the whole email conundrum. simple fact of the matter is our society has been trained and captivated by this reactive instead of proactive attitude towards business. I learned years ago to plan my day the morning before I started it or plan next day the last hour of my prior day. getting assaulted by email through out the day will derail your plan ASAP and you will end up getting NOTHING done that is IMP0ORTANT (think franklin covey time management). if you dont have a to-do list every day, then most likely you are reactive person or in a reactive position. I cant imagine being a linebacker in the nfl and having someone hit me…I would rather plan on who I’m going to hit and how hard I want to hit them!

O.k. back to work, next on my list…check email for 1hr.

chris

By: Brett Derricott

Brett Derricott — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:31:52 +0000

@Ayush: thanks for the comment! I’ve been checking email manually for over a week now and I am happy to report that I love it. It’s taken a bit of self control to not replace the automatic checking with a lot of “send/receive” mouse clicks, but it’s been worth it! I’d love to hear what you think after trying it for a while.

By: Ayush Saran

Ayush Saran — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:13:05 +0000

“Inbox wants you to think that a worthwhile goal is to respond as quickly as possible to as many emails as you can, as if you worked for a big email-generation factory”

That really is true, after trying the Inbox Zero method, sometimes I can’t seem to get back to the task I was doing unless the Inbox is empty, nothing is unread and every email has been filed and sorted away. After which it takes a good deal to time to ramp back in to flow on the previous task.

Im going to try turning off email notifications on my Mac at home