Mel,
Ever heard of the KonMari Method?
It's a Japanese system for ruthlessly eliminating clutter in your life, popularized by Marie Kondo.
Marie is like the tiger mom of decluttering. She forces you to go through every item in your home, piece by piece, and ask a simple question:
"Does this item give me joy?"
If the answer is yes, it can stay. If not, it has to go. Simple binary decision—not a lot of wiggle room there.
For years I've used a variation of this question to manage my email. It's part one of "Perry's Inbox Sanity Formula."
The routine looks like this:
Every few weeks, I look at the messages piling up in my inbox and ask:
"What emails should I get rid of?"
Meaning: Either unsubscribe, or re-subscribe using a secondary email address that you don't check every day.
You might be shocked how much psychic clutter you're inviting into your life. To illustrate this, I sometimes do a little exercise when I speak at a live event:
"Raise your hand if you're on at least 5 marketing guru lists."
Pretty much everyone raises their hand.
"10? 20? 30?"
Often half the room is on 20 or more different lists.
That's the low hanging fruit.
If you are getting emails from someone and it's mostly just useless distraction; if it's not genuinely furthering your goals; if it's all pitch and no content; if you find yourself not reading the emails; then GET RID OF THEM.
And that includes me. I'm completely serious about this.
If the emails you get from ME do not help you build your business; if they do not teach you valuable things; if they don't lift your mood and improve your day... Then I am not earning the right to be in your email box and you should unsubscribe.
EVERY email list that you belong to should pass this test.
I strongly encourage you to unsubscribe from a whole bunch of stuff, TODAY, and de-clutter your life.
The next thing I suggest you do is—by hook or by crook—find SOMEONE that you can delegate stuff too.
Email seems like one of those tasks that's impossible to offload. After all, those messages are addressed to YOU. Isn't it your cosmic duty to answer all of them?
This will kill you if you let it. One info marketer I know of was spending 1-2 hours every day, 7 days a week just replying to email. That's $10 an hour work at best.
Here's how you break free:
Spend a week or two critically examining each message that lands in your inbox. Pretty soon you'll start to see patterns and recurring themes.
When you've isolated the major groups, ask yourself:
"What system can I put in place so that I never have to deal with this type of email again?"
Maybe it's spending an extra 15 minutes writing up an FAQ for your website to eliminate support questions. Maybe you find you can create some boilerplate responses to requests for interviews or JVs. Maybe you draw up a mind map or flowchart that shows how you make a specific kind of decision.
The info marketer I mentioned found he could systematize 90% of his email workload so it could be handled by a virtual assistant in Brazil, leaving just a handful of messages every day that required his personal attention.
You may have noticed I'm spinning lots of plates these days. Evolution 2.0. Simplify. Roundtable meetings, newsletters, blog posts, webinars conference calls... that's only possible because I ruthlessly guard my attention.
Your inbox is your "inner sanctum." Defend it well—and train your assistant to do the same.
You'll find you're far more productive when you're not starting each day under a suffocating pile of unread messages.
Carpe Diem,
Perry Marshall
***NOTE: This email address isn't monitored! If you need help, please email:
support@perrymarshall.com
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