Ep 203 Are you using email correctly?
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Sara Mayer: [00:00:00] Welcome to the bold goal crusher podcast for anyone looking to stop letting life get in the way and start crushing bold goals. I'm your host, Sarah Mayer, and I'm thrilled to navigate this journey with you because it's time to start boldly achieving without working double time. So let's dive in.
Sara Mayer: Hello, Bold Goal Crushers! Happy holidays. I'm sure you are busy in the hustle and bustle of the season. And I hope you took some time to plan how you want your holidays to look and feel this year. So you are not missing out on the magic of the season. If you didn't listen to that episode, it was a couple episodes.
Sara Mayer: back planning your holidays. Please take a listen. It's a great one to think about [00:01:00] before you get into this crazy season. But today it's called, I looked it up. 194 your holiday by design episode. 194 is in November. So if you haven't taken time to plan your holidays. Please do today. I want to ask you, are you using email correctly?
Sara Mayer: I know that's an interesting question. Are you using email correctly? I work with so many clients that are just simply not using email correctly. Email is a communication tool, and yet many clients are using their email as a to do list. And even better, they have a to do list in their email, they have a to do list on paper, they have a to do list on post its, and so they're not even using all these tools correctly.
Sara Mayer: And they have really Piled up a bunch of stuff in their [00:02:00] email. So if you are looking at your email or even thinking about your email and you're getting overwhelmed, you may not be using the tool in the best possible way. So first off, email again, is a communication tool. It's all about communicating with other people.
Sara Mayer: It is not designed to be a to do list. And so many times what happens is that. Because we have this fear of missing out, we grab our phones and we start checking email when we may not be in the best position to handle email, or we rely on email for to do lists and for people to ask us to do things. And so then we get an email to do something.
Sara Mayer: We're sitting in the doctor's office, and we can't do anything about it, so we leave it in our email, but we've already skimmed it, so now it's in our head, and it's clogging up our mental load, and because it's [00:03:00] in our head and our mental load, we're maybe worrying about it, and we need to get back to that email.
Sara Mayer: But now more emails coming in and so then when we check our email again, now we have something else that's up here in our email box and so we make that a priority. Oh, we forgot we needed to do something about that email. And it becomes this snowball that keeps going down the mountain until eventually you have an avalanche and you just have so much email and so many things.
Sara Mayer: So I want to take a step back and one of my friends posted on her Instagram a posting about coming to work for her because she has a position open, which that's not the point of this podcast. Although if you do want a bookkeeping position, let me know. I'll be glad to connect you. But one of the main selling points of this job was that they are nearly.
Sara Mayer: Email free as a company, [00:04:00] I'm going to say that again, their company is nearly email free. I don't know about you, but right then and there I was like sold. I love the fact that she's nearly email free. And I had to ask some questions and I realized that I'm already doing some of this. I'm already teaching some of this, but she was able to go nearly email free because she moved to two other tools that.
Sara Mayer: have almost replaced her email. Her first tool is Slack. I don't use Slack, but I've used Slack and she uses this to communicate back and forth on a quick basis, not text, but Slack is a great way to contain those communications because when you text and you Facebook messenger and you do other things like that, all the things get lost.
Sara Mayer: And so Slack. It puts those things into a [00:05:00] container that can be organized that people can see in threads. So if you do have to communicate a lot with people, consider using Slack or Microsoft Teams or something like that. Now, one of the other things, the other tool that she's moved to, which I'm a big fan of is Asana, which I will link that in the show notes.
Sara Mayer: And Asana is a task manager tool. What, when you're thinking about email, when emails come through and you're asked to do something, if you are in these two systems, you're able to easily forward it to Asana to keep track of that task and to get it done. You can also communicate about that task in Asana and it takes it out of email.
Sara Mayer: I don't know about you, but I. I spend a lot of time searching in my email for certain things. So if you are able to move to Asana, you're keeping all the task [00:06:00] related communication together with the task. It makes it a lot easier so that you're able to do that. and keep track of everything. So stop using email to communicate on things that are need more rapid communication and stop using email as a to do list.
Sara Mayer: So how do you make this migration? Obviously, if you have a business, you can purchase the software. If you're still an entrepreneur, you can purchase the software and get into the. Rhythm, but you move those things slowly into Asana, you respond to requests in Asana. If you have clients, you can have clients give you access to their Asana.
Sara Mayer: So the first step is to really take a look at and assess your email. What are you receiving via email? Is the first thing what types of things we all get the junk. We all get the little [00:07:00] promotions, the Michaels rewards things, but we also have legitimate things that come through email that we need to do.
Sara Mayer: So really looking at what you get and about how much. And then who you get a lot of emails from or send a lot of emails to. And once you assess that, what are you getting? How much are you getting? And then who are you getting it from? It's time to really think about what's the better way. Is it Slack for one on one communication with Asana as your to do list?
Sara Mayer: Or maybe a Trello board? Some people use Trello. But. When we clog up our mind with all these things and our mental load, and we don't have a process to keep all those things, it just becomes clutter, and it causes us to have more time to look at, time looking for stuff. So once you identify the [00:08:00] what, And who you're getting it from and how much, now it's time to come up with a plan.
Sara Mayer: What's the best tool to track this and who needs to be involved in the tool or who do we just need to funnel those things for? So for example, if I get something from a client, they're not in Asana, but I'm going to put that task in Asana. On my to do list so that I know when I get an email from them, I'm going to forward it to Asana and it puts it in the right board and then.
Sara Mayer: It's going to happen. And then I communicate to the client, Hey, we use this tool. So please don't text me because then my team can't see it. All the information is in this tool. And that's, what's really important is once you decide that you're going to change from using email as your constant treadmill to using a tool.
Sara Mayer: to then really training other people on how [00:09:00] to use it and helping them to understand why it is so useful. Now, I love Asana because I can find everything because everything's in a little thread and commentary and documents and stuff like that. But it is a learning curve because email has been around a long time.
Sara Mayer: So we need to help people to really understand what they need and how this helps you to get things done more quickly so that you can turn it around to them. So before we jump into maybe more in depth tactics around email, I encourage you to really take some time and find out what you're getting in email, put them in categories, spam, junk, really legitimate tasks, follow up items, attachments, things to review, things to read, whatever those are.
Sara Mayer: So what are you getting about how much email are you getting a day and on average in a week? It doesn't need to be a perfect [00:10:00] science. Just ballpark that. And then who are the key players that you receive items from? Who are the ones that really need to be involved if you do decide to make a transition?
Sara Mayer: And that will help you to be able to determine what to do moving forward. So start with those simple tasks and then we will circle back on some more advanced tasks. that you can do once you determine actually what you're working with, because remember, email is a tool that should be working for you, not something that you should be like slave to.
Sara Mayer: Like I have to check my email. Oh, I hate checking my email. All right, bold goal crushers. It's time to think about your email in a different way because you can crush your goals and everything that gets in the way. So let's get to it.
Thank you for tuning into the bold goal crusher podcast where we crush goals and everything that gets in the way. I [00:11:00] always love to support my community.
I look forward to seeing you crush your goals this year.
