How to get Inbox Zero by Friday

Social-Media-Post800x800Are your emails haunting you?

With the big, fat “UNREAD” number staring you in the face – how are you supposed to get any work done?

It’s looming in the back of your mind.  

You have to write back to this person or that person.

And then you end up doing nothing and missing deadlines and opportunities.

I understand!  The swamp of the email inbox is maddening.

Wouldn’t it be a miracle to actually get to INBOX ZERO by Friday?

“Yeah, right!” you say in your most sarcastic voice.

“Yeah, right!” I say in my most positive voice.

It can happen and I’ll get you there in just 5 days.  

Join me for my FREE 5-DAY EMAIL CHALLENGE and get Inbox Zero by Friday.

Sign up here.

Here’s what to expect:

Every day I’ll send an email with step-by-step instructions and an audio guide to wrangle your inbox. 

Each day there will be a prompt to help you organize and manage your inbox.  

And by Friday — you’ll have a handle on your inbox so you can stop drowning in unread messages, respond quicker and finally achieve inbox zero.

Let’s do this together!

Get a Stopwatch — You Need It!

clock-782536_640The most common excuse for not being more productive is saying that you have too much going on.

I’m too busy.” — you often say.  

Am I right?

I’m going to let you in on a little secret — no you aren’t!  

The thing with productivity is that it’s not how much you do, but how you do it. Do you get the most out of the time you have?  Or are you so busy because you fill your day with stuff you don’t really need to be doing.  That’s precious time you could be wasting!

The easiest way to find out is to track your time.

When I started making a note of how I spent my day I had a few surprises. For example, that thing I thought took only five minutes, actually took way longer than that.  It’s never just five minutes in the end.

There are a few apps and techniques to help you track your time. You can find them in the Entrepreneur.com article I wrote on time management.

Also if you want to know more about tracking your time, my friend and fellow author Laura Vanderkam is giving away her time tracking guide for free! Laura’s written several books including What The Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast and I Know How She Does It: How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time.  If anyone knows how to manage time it’s her!

What’s Happening in 2016

sylvester-1097596_6402015 was a very exciting year for me. In January my book Listful Thinking came out!  I got to meet so many interesting new people at book signings and at Book Expo America plus I got to meet some of you — the readers of this blog!  What an incredible opportunity.

In 2015 I also created my first online course, Take Back Your Inbox: Stop Drowning in Unread Messages, Respond Quicker and Finally Achieve Inbox Zero. I designed the course to help you feel less overwhelmed by your email. Something I struggled with big time but found some smart solutions to fix!

I also took some exciting vacations to Florida, Puerto Rico, Mexico and San Francisco — with a visit to the Google headquarters!

I have a lot of exciting plans in mind for ListProducer.com in 2016. I made a video to share them with you. Hopefully this is the start of a new trend and I’ll be sharing more videos this year!

Click here to watch it.

Don’t Micromanage – Make This List to Work With Others

team-386673_640Remember in high school when you’d have to do a group project and get paired up with a bunch of other kids?

I was always the one who was trying organize things and make sure we hit our deadlines.  (Nerd Alert!)

But no matter the project — there was always that one kid who said she would be responsible for a crucial element…and then not deliver.  

Nothing would make me more annoyed, but I was always happy when the project was over and we didn’t have to work together again.

In the “real world” the same thing can happen.  But the downside is you can’t trade in your team members as often.  

You’re forced to work with the same team and figure out a way to make it work.

This is where lists can really come to the rescue.    Read more

Make Technology Work For You

mail-566337_640You may have seen my recent emails about email overwhelm and my course Take Back Your Inbox. I’m determined to help everyone reach inbox zero! Our email overwhelm is really just a symptom of our much bigger problem… technology.

There are so many apps out there designed to make your more productive, you could waste a whole week downloading all of them. Too much technology can be counterproductive. So how can you target the right apps for you? How do you figure out which emails count and which ones can go? You can use websites such as my digital mate to research and read more about the latest apps and phone developments to help make a more informed decision about what to download and what to pass on. I’ve also heard of some people deciding to better understand their smartphone technology by buying components from websites similar to Octopart.com and building electrical circuits in order to gain new skills and improve productivity because of a newfound understanding of how this amazing technology works. But I digress.

Tonight I’m doing a teleseminar with ADHD expert and author Terry Matlen where I will be discussing some easy ways to use technology to be more productive. We will talk through a significant number of apps and how to use them throughout your day for maximum efficiency.

What we will cover:

  • How to get out from the overwhelm of email
  • Ways to use technology to help you — apps that will make you more productive

If you’d be interested in joining us for the teleseminar click the link here. I’ll also be doing a Q&A at the end, so if there’s any burning questions you have, now’s your chance!