Our Expert is: Keith Frein
Qualification: Keith has successfully built a company from $5,000 to 44 million. Keith is now spending a wonderul time with his family and building another great business.
Contact Expert Directly: Click Here
Send Us Email Questions: Click Here

Letter From Our Expert, Keith, VIP Member

Keith's Weekly Insights

Tip #7--Tame the Email Beast
February 22, 2008

Email is like a vampire. It sucks the life out of you and turns you into an unproductive, lost soul if you let it. Its time to put a put a stake in its heart (that annoying outlook chime) and take back control of your time and it doing so increase your effectiveness.

The root cause of stress is unfinished business. You sit down at your desk, boot up and head right to the email. Once you have gotten through the spam, the jokes, the headlines (my vice was my online New York Times), and the "urgent" messages, the rat race is in full swing. You have started out your day, again, by WASTING, a good thirty to sixty minutes of time.

Commit to doing the following starting tomorrow!

1)Call a meeting with your staff and say starting today everyone, (CEO included) will no longer check their email during the first 15 minutes of the morning.

2) Instead, decide the most important thing you need to accomplish today to grow your business, kind of a "theme of the day", and do it the first 15-30 minutes! Then feel free to fight fires, check emails, and enjoy the challenges of running a business.

I even recommend taking this initiative one step further. Set up a system, where email can be opened at 4 scheduled times a day. Why go to this extreme? Because YOU are now in control! Your organization has made the shift from REACTIVE to PROACTIVE email management. Be creating this system within your organization, people now know they can only spend 15 minutes a pop responding to emails, thus freeing every one's time to work on ongoing projects instead of reacting to the little Outlook chimes.

Another trick I use now is to put deadlines on emails, such as "Let me know by Tuesday at 5:00 if the meeting is confirmed."

And the idea of any of us communicating urgent items through email is ridiculous. Email was never intended to replace the human touch. If you've got a problem and you feel it needs immediate attention (which, oh by the way, 99 percent of what we do is never urgent), find a way to track that person down. My staff knew it was just not acceptable to communicate "urgent" matters through email.

You and your staff may feel nervous and almost queasy about ignoring email for the first week or ten days. I can almost guarantee you, you and your team will feel giddy with enthusiasm once they see their new surplus of "found time" and control of their schedule.

Keith Frein is the former Co-CEO and Co-Founder of PPR Travel. During Keith's tenure as Co-Founder, the company was ranked as the 5th, 7th and 8th best Small Company to work for in the United States by the Great Places to Work Institute. Keith has recently retired and is working on bringing a new nutritional beverage to market through relationship marketing. Please send comments or questions to keith081@gmail.com.

Links

Experts
Main Page

Keith's Tips Archive