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Hire one or two VAs and have them check my email twice a day. I'll provide a list of rules, and have them (a) notify me immediately of urgent things by phone (b) take care of everything they can via my rules and their judgement and (c) call me at the end of the day with a list of things that ultimately need my attention.
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I am currently spending too much time on email because of contracting work, when really it'll be a better value for everyone if I can focus on the work itself, not the email. I'm hoping this'll help me sever my back-and-forth relationship with email monitoring.
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If I settle into a steady groove meeting the above-mentioned criteria, I'll consider this done until the equilibrium is disturbed.
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At the very least I expect this to give me some insight into my own email workflow, and give me practice delegating something important to someone else. At best, I hope to radically change my daily workflow and free up my psyche for more important things. |
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Brock Tice
- Member Since
- 08/10/09
- About Human, husband, father, (atheist) zen buddhist, tidy, good neighbor, thrifty, starting a cardiac simulation services company, doesn’t worry about current events, reads for pleasure, tries to keep his home and his things safe and sound, occasional home improvement DIYer, trying to keep ties to close friends and family despite moving all over the country.
- Web http://virtuallyshocking.com
- Experiments 19
- Observations 297
Comments & Observations
Matthew Cornell I love it; very 4HWW. I'd like to hear more detail re: how you'll measure the change (improvement, hopefully). Natural indicators are # times you check, # messages you personally process, how much time you spend. A/B would be important, but you'll probably get a fairly clear subjective feel, no? I'm also curious how you'll make the choice of who to hire, including how your decision criteria be different from last time, given that the results weren't satisfying. Good stuff!
May 25, 2010
Brock Tice Found a VA from eLance that I liked, hired her. She couldn't start til June 1st, so I used GetFriday in the meantime. The VA from GetFriday was slow and expensive. I didn't really trust leaving it in her hands. The new VA just started today, and after reviewing the rules, sped right through my inbox. Communication was also easier. She's a native American-English speaker, which I think goes a long way.
Jun 02, 2010
Brock Tice Per my comments on Matt's TTL book experiment, it seems my GetFriday VA was incorrectly filing spam in the Auto-Train folder (instead of Auto-Train/Spam), AND filing a bunch of non-spam stuff as spam. Glad she's not doing it anymore.
Jun 02, 2010
Brock Tice New VA is having a little trouble learning the ropes, but her summaries of emails that need my attention are much better! I'm attributing her troubles to vagueness in my instructions, but I'm having her update the instructions as we go along.
Jun 03, 2010
Matthew Cornell Are the instructions very specific, i.e., people and projects, or general?
Jun 04, 2010
Brock Tice I have two levels of instructions. One set is general, for all email. The other set is specific to a job I'm doing on contract, which requires a lot of back-and-forth and scheduling of phone calls.
I went through them this morning after some reflection and reworked them a bit. There was some unnecessary duplication between the two sets, so I broke it down into general email rules, scheduling rules, and rules for the specific project.
We decided to have her sign most of her emails with her name, followed by 'Assistant to Brock Tice' or something like that, for clarity.
Jun 04, 2010
Brock Tice By the way, I had this idea before reading this blog post, but I found it before putting the idea into action, and it has helped shape the process. Great minds think alike, I guess. :) http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/01/21/the-holy-grail-how-to-outsource-the-inbox-and-never-check-email-again/
Jun 04, 2010
Brock Tice I am still having a little trouble with this. I have a few customers I'm working with that are having problems that require a lot of back and forth, and management is breathing down my neck on a few of them because they want them done NOW NOW NOW. This has been a good job for me for a short while, but I'm getting tired of it. Glad I've got a new gig come next month.
I continue thinking about how to manage expectations in terms of email.
Jun 07, 2010
Brock Tice I have managed to avoid checking email at all so far today. We'll see what happens when I get to my email check in a few hours. I have to remember to let small bad things happen so that I can make the big good things happen. Feels nice to be able to focus and stay out of my Inbox.
Jun 08, 2010
Brock Tice Have now gone two days without checking email during the day. It's nice to have my focus back.
I've started getting a little thrill before my afternoon email check. My heart starts pounding a little while Thunderbird opens.
So far, no terrible surprises. There was a little confusion on an Elance message board, but it was all sorted out with time to spare.
Fired my GetFriday VA today. She was nice and tried hard, but GetFriday is too expensive, and her skills didn't warrant that pay grade, nor can I afford it.
Jun 09, 2010
Matthew Cornell Wow - really interesting, Brock. To understand: You're going to Elance to find a replacement, right? Also, what's the origin of the thrill? That you've missed something?
Jun 10, 2010
Brock Tice Sorry, my update was confusing. Working roughly backwards, the thrill is worrying that I've missed something or my VA has screwed something up. I don't worry about it during the day, but right before checking my email apparently I do worry.
I'm actually trying to find some legal and accounting people on Elance, and having my current (non-GetFriday) VA handle setting up interview calls with them, things like that. She misunderstood my intent with respect to one proposal and there was a little confusion in the messages with that provider.
Jun 10, 2010
Brock Tice My VA brought something to my attention in my email this morning and I made the mistake of loading my whole email client instead of just pulling it up by searching my gmail archive. Derailed part of my morning. Email is disruptive.
Jun 10, 2010
Matthew Cornell Caught in the email black hole... At least you noticed it!
Are you getting a sense of whether working like this will be valuable?
Jun 15, 2010
Brock Tice My email VA was gone on Monday -- traveling, and she'd warned me well in advance, but it was a good taste of what life is like without her, and I was much more stressed out about what could be going on in my Inbox when I wasn't looking. It's nice to have someone else, particularly someone less emotionally attached, taking care of that for me.
Jun 16, 2010
Matthew Cornell Interesting result! Having to do your own laundry.
Jun 20, 2010
Brock Tice Having my VA handling my email has enabled me to tackle what really matters in my work and not stress about many things that don't. I'm marking this one completed, and I'm also calling it a success.
Jun 22, 2010
Matthew Cornell Good work! I'm sure others who are thinking about a VA will find this helpful, Brock.
Jun 23, 2010