![fastcompany:
7 Tips For Getting Your Inbox To Zero
1. The Save Out
Copy and paste the entire email to a word document and file it there for safekeeping. Word docs are designed to be saved and stored but emails are not. There is an emotional attachment to every email in your inbox so get it out of sight so that it’s out of mind.
2. The Offline Attack
Nothing is more emotionally defeating than spending 2 hours in your inbox and having a net gain of only 2 emails completed because responses were coming in as fast as you were sending them out… Instead, work “offline” every single time you answer emails.
3. The Extended Out of Office
When you go out of town for vacation or a work conference, turn your “out of office responder” for one day longer than you’re actually gone. The magic—which I discovered by accident—is in adding one extra day to it so that you legitimately have a catch-up day to get your feet back under you when you return.
4. Multiple Strings
Unfortunately a large number of people lack what should be required prudence in using the “reply all” button. Therefore it’s incredible the number of emails in your inbox that will be “strings.” In other words, you’ll have 10 emails that are all the same conversation. …Quickly glance at your email list for emails with the same subject line and delete the oldest ones, leaving the newer ones for you to read later. This is a quick way to process several emails all at once.
5. Email Date Night
Create the same protected time every so often with your inbox. It’s astounding how much you can get accomplished in four uninterrupted hours of office time.
6. Scan and Flip
When you sit down to finally catch up on email, work with a 2-minute drill. Per #2 above you should be offline and start to build momentum by first tackling any emails that can be processed and completed in less than two minutes. If it will take longer than two minutes to deal with then skip it for now and just continue scanning—get through the easy ones first. Then once you get to the bottom of your inbox (you will likely have made a large dent) “flip” your emails so that the oldest are at the top and the newest are at the bottom. By eliminating the base of emails at your inbox you’ll find that it’s less likely to pile up on top of itself.
7. Learn the “Let Go”
Truly one of the most substantial growth areas for me in managing my office work was learning to let go of my own deep-rooted desire to share my opinion on everything. And even fewer items yet will be handled significantly different in our organization solely because of my one additional insight. People are generally capable of making good decisions and often things end up being better than they would’ve been had I stuck my nose in it. This mental shift in your attitude will show up pragmatically in your inbox by you learning to enjoy the delete button—without needing to share a response.
[Image: Flickr user Chris Gunton]
So, yea, I have so much trouble keeping up with my inbox. The weekly email date night sounds like such a simple and terrific idea. I’m kind of embarrassed I didn’t think of it. -_-;](http://25.media.tumblr.com/8639ed0e9564aafc9fb92c3b2bb51ac5/tumblr_mih2seOggr1qzt7h7o1_500.jpg)
7 Tips For Getting Your Inbox To Zero
1. The Save Out
Copy and paste the entire email to a word document and file it there for safekeeping. Word docs are designed to be saved and stored but emails are not. There is an emotional attachment to every email in your inbox so get it out of sight so that it’s out of mind.
2. The Offline Attack
Nothing is more emotionally defeating than spending 2 hours in your inbox and having a net gain of only 2 emails completed because responses were coming in as fast as you were sending them out… Instead, work “offline” every single time you answer emails.
3. The Extended Out of Office
When you go out of town for vacation or a work conference, turn your “out of office responder” for one day longer than you’re actually gone. The magic—which I discovered by accident—is in adding one extra day to it so that you legitimately have a catch-up day to get your feet back under you when you return.
4. Multiple Strings
Unfortunately a large number of people lack what should be required prudence in using the “reply all” button. Therefore it’s incredible the number of emails in your inbox that will be “strings.” In other words, you’ll have 10 emails that are all the same conversation. …Quickly glance at your email list for emails with the same subject line and delete the oldest ones, leaving the newer ones for you to read later. This is a quick way to process several emails all at once.
5. Email Date Night
Create the same protected time every so often with your inbox. It’s astounding how much you can get accomplished in four uninterrupted hours of office time.
6. Scan and Flip
When you sit down to finally catch up on email, work with a 2-minute drill. Per #2 above you should be offline and start to build momentum by first tackling any emails that can be processed and completed in less than two minutes. If it will take longer than two minutes to deal with then skip it for now and just continue scanning—get through the easy ones first. Then once you get to the bottom of your inbox (you will likely have made a large dent) “flip” your emails so that the oldest are at the top and the newest are at the bottom. By eliminating the base of emails at your inbox you’ll find that it’s less likely to pile up on top of itself.
7. Learn the “Let Go”
Truly one of the most substantial growth areas for me in managing my office work was learning to let go of my own deep-rooted desire to share my opinion on everything. And even fewer items yet will be handled significantly different in our organization solely because of my one additional insight. People are generally capable of making good decisions and often things end up being better than they would’ve been had I stuck my nose in it. This mental shift in your attitude will show up pragmatically in your inbox by you learning to enjoy the delete button—without needing to share a response.
[Image: Flickr user Chris Gunton]
So, yea, I have so much trouble keeping up with my inbox. The weekly email date night sounds like such a simple and terrific idea. I’m kind of embarrassed I didn’t think of it. -_-;
Feb 22 2013 | photo post reblogged from fastcompany
advice business trep startup startuplove productivity true story this is my life entrepreneurship geek
![fastcompany:
6 Strategy Lessons From A Former Chess Prodigy Who’s Now A CEO
Seeing All Possible Futures
You’re constantly looking two, three, four moves ahead,” explains Moore. “If you do this move, what’s the countermove? In a chess game, your mind is constantly running permutations of decision trees. In business, your mind should be doing the same.
Eyes On The Endgame
So, too, in many sectors of business, in which many competitors vie for one or a few dominant, winner-takes-most slots (pending SEC approval).”You’re looking out a year, two years, three years,” says Moore. “Sometimes that means in the short term you make sacrifices.” You might make a tactical decision that appears to put you behind, but actually strengthens your position for when the smoke clears, and each side’s knights and bishops have fallen.
Relentless Focus
“One of the biggest mistakes in business is to lose focus,” says Moore. It’s easy to get distracted by what your competitors are doing. But just because a competitor launched a flashy feature doesn’t mean that you need to match that feature. What you need to do is ask yourself whether matching that feature will advance you towards the goal you’ve already identified.
Punches? Roll With Them
“The vast majority of startups will fail,” says Moore. You have to believe that yours won’t. But part of you has to know, too, that though “it’ll sting, and part of me will be devastated” if yours does fail, ultimately any battle scars will make you stronger and smarter for the next venture.
Pattern Recognition
Playing chess teaches you to recognize patterns: the tempting bishop sacrifice that actually led you into a trap, the queen swap that looked favorable but prevented you from castling. You play, you learn.
Know Your Team
In some ways, chess is a laboratory for human resources problems. “You have to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the team, of your employees,” says Moore. “You have to understand that the pawn has its role, and it’s a very important one, just as important as the queen, rook, or bishop. Every piece is critical, and the only way to win is to leverage all those pieces’ skill sets together.”
[Image: Flickr user Martin Lopatka]
Such good advice! Especially the “focus” and “team” points. In my limited experience as an entrepreneur, your focus and your team is EXTREMELY fundamental. These are two things I stumbled on and learned early on in my business. These points can EASILY apply to many other things in life, too, not just business or career.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/94bcd6df838e572aa0d2864d921d5f4b/tumblr_mih502Z0qN1qzt7h7o1_500.jpg)
6 Strategy Lessons From A Former Chess Prodigy Who’s Now A CEO
Seeing All Possible Futures
You’re constantly looking two, three, four moves ahead,” explains Moore. “If you do this move, what’s the countermove? In a chess game, your mind is constantly running permutations of decision trees. In business, your mind should be doing the same.
Eyes On The Endgame
So, too, in many sectors of business, in which many competitors vie for one or a few dominant, winner-takes-most slots (pending SEC approval).”You’re looking out a year, two years, three years,” says Moore. “Sometimes that means in the short term you make sacrifices.” You might make a tactical decision that appears to put you behind, but actually strengthens your position for when the smoke clears, and each side’s knights and bishops have fallen.
Relentless Focus
“One of the biggest mistakes in business is to lose focus,” says Moore. It’s easy to get distracted by what your competitors are doing. But just because a competitor launched a flashy feature doesn’t mean that you need to match that feature. What you need to do is ask yourself whether matching that feature will advance you towards the goal you’ve already identified.
Punches? Roll With Them
“The vast majority of startups will fail,” says Moore. You have to believe that yours won’t. But part of you has to know, too, that though “it’ll sting, and part of me will be devastated” if yours does fail, ultimately any battle scars will make you stronger and smarter for the next venture.
Pattern Recognition
Playing chess teaches you to recognize patterns: the tempting bishop sacrifice that actually led you into a trap, the queen swap that looked favorable but prevented you from castling. You play, you learn.
Know Your Team
In some ways, chess is a laboratory for human resources problems. “You have to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the team, of your employees,” says Moore. “You have to understand that the pawn has its role, and it’s a very important one, just as important as the queen, rook, or bishop. Every piece is critical, and the only way to win is to leverage all those pieces’ skill sets together.”
[Image: Flickr user Martin Lopatka]
Such good advice! Especially the “focus” and “team” points. In my limited experience as an entrepreneur, your focus and your team is EXTREMELY fundamental. These are two things I stumbled on and learned early on in my business. These points can EASILY apply to many other things in life, too, not just business or career.
Feb 21 2013 | photo post reblogged from fastcompany
entrepreneurship startup startuplove advice true story this is my life business trep
“Today, you can do almost anything and get away with it.”
George Lois, Art director, designer, and author
speaking at CreativeMornings/NewYork(*watch the talk)
Feb 20 2013 | photo post reblogged from creativemornings
Keep email marketing in your hand
When it comes to creating your online marketing strategies, what are you doing? Are you still using email, or have you moved away from that completely to focus on new modes of online marketing? A lot of companies are opting out of email marketing under the misconception that email is dead. Are you following suit? If so, you need to fold and start over, and bring email back into your poker hand.
Emails work , folks!
Feb 12 2013 | text post reblogged from bitshare
How To Develop Your Idea Muscle by James Altucher
Here are some ways to get your idea muscle stronger from blogger James Altucher’s post How To Become An Idea Machine.
You do this by developing the idea muscle:
A) Every day, read/skim, chapters from books on at least four different topics.
B) Write down ten ideas. About anything. It doesn’t matter if they are business ideas, book ideas, ideas for surprising your spouse in bed, ideas for what you should do if you are arrested for shoplifting, ideas for how to make a better tennis racquet, anything you want. The key is that it has to be ten or more.
You want your brain to sweat.
To hurt to come up with more and more ideas. One possibility right now is to list ten ideas that are “too big for me” and what the next steps might be. For instance, one idea might be “launch solar panels into outerspace to more efficiently generate solar power”. Another idea might be, “genetically engineer a microbe that sucks the salt out of water”. I have no idea if that’s even possible. Another idea might be, “within one year I am going to write a book and give away a million copies for free”.
You don’t ever have to look at these ideas again. The purpose is not to come up with a good idea. The purpose is to have 1000s of ideas over time. To develop the idea muscle and turn it into a machine.
C) Be a transmitter. Two farmers live side by side and drink their water from wells they’ve each built on their property. One farmer’s well runs out of water and he needs rain to come quickly or he will die of thirst. The other farmer did the work and dug his well so an underground stream ran right into it. So his well was always filled with water and he never had to worry.
How do you create this underground stream?
By making sure the other parts of your life are in balance: you have no bad emotional situations/relationships happening or you are doing your best to stay disengaged from them. You are keeping physically healthy, no drinking, eating well, sleeping well. And spiritually (a word I hate because of 200 years of meaningless connotations that have been applied to it but I can’t think of a better word), you realize that you can’t control everything in your life, cultivating a sense of surrender to the present moment as opposed to time traveling to your regrets of the past and your fears of the future.
D) Activate another part of your brain. I write every day. So sometimes I am drawing too much water from the well, from that underground stream. Just like I wrote you need to diversify all aspects of your life, you also need to diversify your brain. The other day Claudia and I took a watercolor class. I haven’t watercolored in my life. We got there and the next thing I knew it was three hours later. My brain didn’t even notice the time passing. What did I have to show for it? The worst excuse for a sunset, some mountains, some clouds, ever watercolored. But my brain felt good.
E) No pressure. This is similar to the “burnout” question that came up in my last post. Sometimes you plant seeds and not every seed works out and grows into a beautiful plant. In fact, very few do. If you pressure yourself that every seed will be the most amazingly beautiful plant in the world then you are going to set yourself up for burnout and disappointment. Sometimes I have to work on something and it’s enough to just jot down some ideas, or look at what I’ve done so far, and then set it down again. Get my subconscious working on it. (see below)
F) An exercise to get you get your subconscious working on an idea: I have a very strict routine every day. I wake up, read, write, exercise, eat, meetings (phone or live), then reverse the process: eat, write, read, sleep.
But sometimes when I need to rejuvenate a little bit I have to shake things up. Do something different.
Maybe take a walk at 5 in the morning instead of read. Maybe sleep in four hour shifts one day instead of eight hours straight. Maybe spend a day writing handwritten letters instead of going on the computer. Shaking things up makes the brain say, “what the hell just happened?” And while the conscious brain is confused the subconscious slips in and drops off what it’s been working on while your conscious brain has been too busy. Write down your routine. Make it as detailed a possible. What can you change today?
H) List your childhood passions. When I was six years old I was passionately interested in both comic books and Greek mythology. In high school and college I took five years of French and spent some time in France (even had an office there with my first business). Right now I can’t remember a single word of French except for maybe “oui”. But I remember vividly almost every comic and book I read about Greek myths from when I was six. From the very first comic (the “legion of superheroes” had to come back in time and stay with Clark’s parents in Smallville) to every comic afterwards.
We only ever remember the things we are passionate about. Ultimately, these become the fields where ideas bloom and are harvested. Everything else dries up inside and dies.
Try to think back and think of all the things you ever were passionate about from the age of five on. You’ll be surprised how many things there were. And how many ways these passions can now be cross-fertilized and mate with each other to provide your next set of passions and ideas.
I) Surf the Internet. I just saw an “infographic” (Infographics are quickly becoming the new blog posts) on how to be creative. It said “turn off the computer”. Sometimes this is true. Sometimes not. With the entire world of knowledge at our fingertips it sometimes is fun to get sucked down the rabbit hole like Alice and drift around in Wonderland. Some good places to start are braindroppings, thebrowser.com, and (not safe for work), extragoodshit.phlap.net. I might not get any ideas from what I see but seeds might be planted. I find that I get a similar feeling to when I go into the book store at a museum, pick out a bunch of books and sit down and skim through them. It tickles the brain and lights things up that may have been dormant.
I need to try some of these!
Feb 8 2013 | text post reblogged from fastcompany
creative startuplove true story trep entrepreneurship advertising advice Branding marketing startup
