So many of us waste so much time inputing appointments into our calendar based on information from our emails. There’s a better way and in this video I show you just one way to improve you email experience as it relates to using your calendar inside your email inbox.
Click here to watch the video…
If you hate your email I can help
You probably suck at email. Good news, you’re not alone. Better news, I’m going to help you become an email ninja.
– You can’t get through it fast enough
– You can’t find old emails when we need to find them.
– You have to log in to multiple email accounts.
– You get too much email spam.
– You waste time doing repetitive tasks like labeling and sorting messages.
If you take four minutes to fill out the five question survey below I promise that I will help your inbox on a regular basis. Your input will be used to add more content to an existing system I’ve created to achieve inbox ZERO almost every day. You’ll do it without having to learn some funky system that takes a PhD to understand. For filling out the survey you’ll get a fat discount when I release my system to the public.
(Oh yeah, can you share this survey with folks on Twitter and mention @andytraub or use the Facebook button in the sidebar?)
Thanks, you’re awesome.
Click here to take the survey and I promise to hook you up!
How to improve your Gmail experience with the Preview Pane
As an admitted email addict I am constantly trying to find ways to get through my inbox more quickly. Gmail has several settings and Labs (experimental features found on the Settings page) that help me have an awesome Gmail experience. Here’s a video preview of a new Lab feature. Some of these features go away over time and some are incorporated permanently into Gmail for all users. So here’s a video preview of the “Preview Pane” Lab feature.
You can enlarge the video to full screen using the button on the bottom right of the video
What do you do to improve your Gmail experience or what questions can I answer for you to help you improve your Gmail experience?
How I work: Make Gmail or Google Apps your default email handler in Mac OS X
Loving things more than you should
I love my Macbook Pro and Google Apps. I sincerely cannot imagine running my business without both of them. I recently ran into an issue because I could not figure out how to get my Mac to open up my mail to: links (that’s an email address in your browser) to use Gmail or in my case Google Apps (Gmail for your domain – example is [email protected]). So I searched and finally found an answer by a smart guy named Paul Baumgart. In his original post entitled Opening mailto: Links in Gmail with Google Chrome on Mac OS X he was just addressing Google Chrome but it does work with Firefox as well. He wrote a small program that fixes the issue so you can use Gmail or Google Apps as your default email handler in Mac OS X. It’s a thing of beauty.
The Fix
Now when I click on a link my Highrise account I open up a new email in my Google Apps account with the CC: address for that Highrise account. If you use a service like BatchBook for your CRM then this issue is built in. Here’s how to set your email links to open in Gmail or Google Apps in BatchBook.
My Tutorial
Here’s a six minute video on how to install the program he created so you can use Gmail or Google Apps as your default email handler with Mac OS X.
[Read more…]
Checking email instead of stalking it (How I work)
I like it when you send me an email. It feels like a letter, and letters are really personal. I’ve exchanged emails with Seth Godin and he never writes more than 3 sentences, but I still love those emails because it’s a real person using their real voice to talk to me. Your email count and your productivity are often like a scale, the more of one means the less of the other. The first measure of your relationship with email is how often you check it.
In my email signature I add a line that I only check my email twice a day.
This creates an expectation that I may not get back to people right away. Many people treat email like instant messaging and expect replies immediately. For a great email signature service check out Wisestamp. I also put the reminder there to remind me that I have created that expectation so I don’t have to get back to people as soon as I feel like I have to.
Check your email first thing in the morning.
I want to provide great service to my clients and I can take care of a vast majority of their needs in a 30 minute email session in the morning. This allows me to not think about my emails till at least lunch. It also allows me to charge my brain with great information to start my day since I subscribe to my favorite blogs via email (the rest get put into my RSS feed reader which is often neglected).
Don’t leave your email program/window open and turn off all on-screen notifications.
Email is like Bob, the guy at the office who stops by to say “Hi” but really just needs to buy a parakeet so he has someone to talk to. He’s a time thief because you’re too nice to say, “Bob, I have to get back to a task I was working on when you interrupted me.” Saying “Hi” is cool. Messing up my work day and making me less productive is not cool. You don’t have a Bob you say? Well you do have notifications of new emails and they’re worse than Bob because they are truly there all the time. Turn them off. Close your email window too, it’s getting drafty in the productivity part of your brain.
Filter your emails
I’ll cover this in a future post but if your email program doesn’t have filters you need to get one that does (start by going HERE). If you already have that kind of account then go to Settings – Filters and then read through your options. By creating filters you can make emails skip your inbox (where you check the most) and go straight to folders where you can view them when you have time. Filter out newsletters, blogs, Groupons and other daily reminders into a folder. Check it once a day and then check it a different day. By filtering your emails you’ll spend less time switching between client correspondence and “deal of the day” kinds of messages.
What are your tips for checking email instead of stalking it?
