Schedule – Jaxstar Solutions

How To Stop Email Taking Over Your Day

Al — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 21:47:21 +0000

Email is a fantastic tool – it’s fast, convenient, you can add attachments and hook it up to all sorts of other software. You’ve got a written record of conversations and you feel like you’re in touch with the world.

The problem is, email can take over your entire day. Even when you’re not responding, the little ‘ding’ creates micro interruptions, distracting you and cutting your productivity without you even realising.

Managing your email is one of the best ways to gain back your time. And it’s not difficult to do. The 4 easiest ways to deal with your email are:

Setting up rules
Using other software
Turning it off and scheduling
Unsubscribing

Let’s look at those in turn.

Setting up email rules

Rules allow you to predetermine what happens when certain emails land in your inbox. They are a great way to keep your inbox organised and help you concentrate on the emails that need your attention.

For example, if you have purchase receipts sent to you, you could set up a folder that these are automatically redirected to. That way, when it comes to doing your bookkeeping, all your receipts are in one place, and in the meantime, all those emails aren’t cluttering up your inbox.

Using a different software

This will only work for certain tasks that email currently does, but it is worth investigating which ones will save you time.

One of our favourite alternatives is calendar schedulers such as Calendly or Koalendar. These save massive amounts of time when booking meetings because instead of emailing back and forth trying to fix a date and time that suits you both, you simply send them a link to your calendar and leave it up to them.

Turning email off and scheduling

Turning your emails off for periods during the day will give you back more time than you realise.

Decide on set periods that you want to deal with email – maybe it’s 3 half-hour slots morning, lunch, and at the end of the day. Or maybe you do an hour at 2 pm and that’s it. Whatever works for you is fine, but set a schedule and stick to it. You can always set up an auto-reply to let people know when you’re available and a phone number if it’s urgent.

You can also write emails and then schedule them to be sent at a more appropriate time.

For example, if you’re writing an email at 9 pm, you might not want to give the impression that you are contactable at that time. In that case, schedule it to be sent first thing in the morning.

Unsubscribe from unnecessary emails

This is probably the easiest and most important tip from this entire blog. Unsubscribing from emails you don’t read or know who they’re from will be the biggest decluttering exercise you can do for your inbox.

It’s so easy to sign up for this free report or that free checklist and then forget to unsubscribe again.

If you’re not sure if you want to read the emails sent from a subscription, set up a rule to send it to a folder. If you don’t look through that folder within 3 months, you can unsubscribe.

Summary

Email is a habit we got into. Therefore, it’s also a habit we can get out of, or at least adjust to suit our lives better.

Use these simple tips to give yourself more time for the things that matter.

If you want help in organising your email inbox or for other time-saving advice, contact us to see how we can help set you up for success.

For more tips on systems and processes that help grow your business, subscribe to our newsletter here.

Get a little superstar treatment by contacting us on:

Email: info@jaxstarsolutions.co.uk

Telephone: 020 3362 4436

Mobile: 07811 393520

Website: https://www.jaxstarsolutions.co.uk/

Effectively Managing Your Time When Covering For Others

Al — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 21:27:42 +0000

Time management is one of the biggest struggles we see in businesses today. This is especially true when you’re having to take on someone else’s responsibilities for a time.

In this blog, I’ll break down how you can manage your time effectively and complete the most important tasks in time without having to sacrifice your sanity.

The mindset

The first thing to remember is that you can only do what you can do. There is no point trying to overstretch yourself, and some things will just have to wait.

You already know that you’ll do your best, so be comfortable with that and then work out where your best will be directed.

Know the end goal

Without having goals in place, how do you know what you should be working on or towards?

If you have a list of tasks, try filtering them through an end-goal objective – ask yourself “does this task take me closer to what I want to achieve?”. This will give you a clearer picture of what is important.

Defining what’s important?

A great tool to use to help organise your tasks into levels of importance is the Eisenhower Matrix.

Its 4 quadrants are separated into:

Important–Urgent tasks include things like crisis management, pressing deadlines and scheduled meetings.

Important–Not Urgent would include preparation and planning, business and personal development, relationship building and so on.

Not Important–Urgent tasks are some emails and phone calls, unimportant meetings, admin, etc.

Not Important–Not Urgent are the real time wasters (tasks and people), spending time on social media, some calls and emails, etc.

Once you’ve categorised your tasks into these segments, you know what you need to focus on.

Ideally, you would be spending most of your time in the green Important–Not Urgent segment as this is where the tasks that can make the biggest impact live. If they reach Important–Urgent then you are likely to be firefighting at this point.

Delegating can also make a real difference to your time management and is a really useful skill to develop. When you have a team that you trust and processes that work, this should be very easy to do.

Make sure that you are not spending time on tasks that do not require your level of skill. Your efforts are better suited to doing the important elements of your job, so delegate out anything that isn’t to someone else.

Doing the work

Now you have your tasks prioritised, you should be able to pick the top 3 that need to be completed today. You may have 3 for you and 3 for the person you’re covering, but you at least know what your focus is today.

Use the Pomodoro technique to effectively manage your day. This technique consists of 30 minutes of focused work followed by a 5-minute break. If you would like to find out more about this technique, you can find all of the amazing advice and tricks here https://francescocirillo.com/pages/pomodoro-technique.

A lot of people struggle with taking the 5-minute break, but it is essential in making sure your energy levels (mental energy in particular) can be maintained throughout the day.

So take your 5 minutes. Get up, walk around, get some water, then come back just that little bit refreshed ready to go again.