Business Strategy for CPA's 129 How to Spend Way Less Time on Email Every Day
Do you ever get sucked into your email Inbox, wander around in there for hours, only to resurface wondering where the time went and why you went in there in the first place?
Having a disorderly system to process your email - or worse - no system at all - can cost you hours a day of lost efficacy. Losing just ONE hour a day all year long is the equivalent of SIX and a HALF weeks of work time.
My guest today is Marcey Rader, a productivity expert and the President of Rader Co - Her training company specializes in helping accountants and CPAs to get on top of their email, tasks, and their calendar.
Today it’s all about getting your time back by learning the secrets of email processing, so that you stay out of the Inbox vortex.
6 Steps to get your process organized:
- Have a strategy for processing email: be intentional and thoughtful about checking it, rather than willy-nilly or “all day every day. Email strategy comes from the top down, so make sure your staff is clear about email best practices and proper etiquette.
- Process it like a task – do it, and be done. Don’t context switch: it leads to decision fatigue and feeling busy but not productive
- Know what times of day to send. Have it land when people are most likely to read it - do not send at the end of the day or at night when your reader is likely to read it. Otherwise they make worse choices. Use Delay Send (Outlook) or Send Later (Gmail) to manage send times. When you email at night, you might be interrupting your recipients’ evening or weekend.
- Use the OHIO Method - Only Handle It Once. See the 5 Steps for Processing email so that you can handle your email one time, rather than open-close-open-close-open-close.
- Turn off notifications. Your body gets used to the dopamine drip. Your default setting is designed to get you to use the product more.
- Create rules and filters: Emails that you don’t want to see right now have filters to go to a folder. Certain domain names or email addresses bypass the Inbox altogether.
- Inbox Pause – Allows you to pause new emails from landing in your Inbox
- Boomerang – Allows you to tell emails to come back to you if it hasn’t been opened.
- Streak – Allows you to track email opens. It’s a powerful CRM; if you only want email tracking, then download the Chrome extension, relaunch Chrome, and select “only email tracking” when logging back in
- Use Promotions and Updates tabs to train emails to land in the right places - Or Focus and Clutter if Outlook
- Delay Send or Send Later – so emails land during appropriate work hours
How to process email with 5 choices:
- Delete - the ones you don’t need
- Delegate - if you’re the bottleneck, send them along
- Archive - the emails you need to read and file away
- Reply - if less than 2 minutes
- Create a Task - move to Tasks if in Gmail or assign to task in calendar
Symptoms of email addiction or lack of process:
- If your family is on your case about it
- If you can’t take a 15-second elevator ride without taking out your phone
- If you’re not present when you are with people
Link to the webinar that got me down to Inbox Zero and freed up my time:
https://www.cpaacademy.org/archived_show/a0D2S00000ng1gsUAA
Get the free gift from Marcey:
Listeners receive the first 21 pages and all the Novice habits for Month One of Marcey's latest book, Work Well. Play More! Productive, Clutter-Free, Healthy Living - One Step at a Time. You can get that here: workwellplaymore.com/gift
Connect with Marcey:
Website: https://helloraderco.com/
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Free 5-day email course - Better Pricing Strategies for CPAs
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