E-mail Unplugged

I’ve been thinking a lot about email lately.  Not only because I’ve taken over the Customer Support for three extremely busy online entrepreneurs and receive 1000′s of emails daily.  But also because I seem to be losing the battle to master my addiction to email.

I spent the weekend at our family cottage, frustrated by the lightning fast speed of our dialup connection (I didn’t even know my modem could downgrade to 28.8!).  I spent the weekend downloading email a few times a day and replied to them as time permitted.  It’s quite a switch for me, as someone who is never more than five minutes away from a live internet connection, it was a lesson in patience and email freedom to be forced to check email only three times daily.

A lesson in A LOT of patience!

My frustrating experience at the cottage came on the heels of a call I listened to recently with Tim Ferris, author of “The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich“.  Those of you who have been following me for a while know that I love my time with my family and often don’t get a chance to spend as much time with them as I should (especially my wonderful and supportive partner).  You know that my goal is to design my business so that I only work a few hours a day and can spend time taking care of myself, my home, my garden and my family.

Tim Ferris posits that one of the ways to create that reality is to limit your reading of emails to once per day or even once per week.  I don’t think I could go for once per week but I have been scheduling blocks of time daily to read and reply to email.  My productivity is much more focused when I’m not interrupting my train of thought to immediately answer every email that hits my inbox.

He also states that the best way to free yourself from your business is to design your business to run independently of your participation.  I’ll be starting a new Customer Service business geared towards fulfilling the customer service needs of the online entrepreneur.  Be sure to stayed tuned for more details.

To listen to the habit altering interview with Tim Ferris, hosted by Suzanne Falter-Barnes of Get Known Now, click play below:

To order your copy through Amazon, click here.

And then tonight, as I’m sitting with my laptop, watching Stephen Colbert, I stumbled across another book on the fascinating subject of e-mail: “Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home” by David Shipley.  From what I gathered in the Interview, it’s a funny and entertaining look at e-mail etiquette designed to make you “think before you click”.

To pick up your copy from Amazon, click here.