Admittedly, I’m not very good at answering email or listening to voicemail. Quite a long time ago I decided all that stuff is a time killer and if I actually took the time to reply half my day would get used. For me, being selective about the communication to which I respond frees up hours of my week.
My daughter asked me why I have thousands of unread emails and many voicemails I hadn’t played. According to my iPhone I have over 2,000 unread emails, 200 unread texts, and 45 unheard voicemails. For me anyways, it all boils down time.
Like many people, I receive tons of emails everyday and have managed to create filters that narrow the email in my inbox to those that are somewhat important. Google’s Gmail allows me to make rules to automatically move mail from my inbox directly to the trash. One rule uses every drug name I can think of and another uses profanities.
Phone calls are my nemesis. I log approximately 4,000 minutes of talk time per month (2 hours per day). Most of the calls I receive are business related so I try and answer most of them. However, if the caller leaves a voicemail it will never get returned or heard. After business hours I field calls using my phone’s directory.
My February 1, 2011 article talked about data hoarding. Time consuming digital communication is not hoarding; rather, it’s a time waster that collects to a point of no return. We reach a point when we have to make a decision whether to reply or just keep moving forward.
I’m proud to say I’m not the only one who does this. Over the past week I’ve taken an informal survey of customers and most have told me answering all that stuff would be a time killer. One local business owner told me she disconnected the voicemail from their phone system because the first hour of every day was spent listening and replying.
Communication, as one business owner put it, is a necessary hindrance. He went on to say that if he replied to every piece of mail, email, text message and voicemail most of his day would get chewed up. His answer was to setup an automatic responder telling the sender his business will reply when it has time. Most of the time, he went on to tell me, the messages never get returned.
Backing up others’ email files is a frequent job for my business. Over the past several years I’ve noticed the size of files has grown exponentially. It used to be we’d see a 200 megabyte email file and think it was big. Last week we transferred a 20 gigabyte file and thought nothing of the file size.
It seems like every piece of business communication we receive is electronic in some way or another. Each piece of correspondence requires the time to read or listen and then reply. During my business day my time is used interfacing with people and managing my business. I’ve prioritized face-to-face contact because that’s generally the ‘bird in hand.’
The second best answer I heard during my informal survey was, “if it’s important they will find a way to get in contact.” The best answer was from an attorney in the Greenfield area. His reply to my query: “I bill for my time so it’s in my best interest to listen, read and reply to every piece of correspondence that comes my way.”
(Jeromy Patriquin is the President of Laptop & Computer Repair, Inc. located at 509 Main St. in Gardner. You can reach him at (978) 919-8059 or visit www.LocalComputerWiz.com.)