Are you Overwhelmed by email?

I recently had a client ask me how do I avoid becoming overwhelmed?

Reality is, in today’s hectic society, overwhelm is just part of the game we play but it is up to us to decide what rules are we going to play by.

One of the main contributors to daily overwhelmed is email. Ask anyone how many mails are sitting in their Inbox unread - the answers can be shocking! The problem is no one teaches us how to ‘Manage’ our Outlook or G Mail account and everyone is left to their own methods or lack of.

The other big creator of overwhelm is the expectation of an instant response to e mails 24/7. Depending on your company response time policy, rather than allowing senders get into the habit of expecting an immediate reply - it is worth agreeing some communication ground rules with them in advance by setting a time limit for when you will get back to them. In my instance I have added a line to my signature which says: E mail response time within 24 hours - if matter is urgent text or call me on my mobile. Obviously I have provided my mobile number in my signature.

Worth talking it through with your colleagues and agreeing a policy and procedure that will work for everyone and in turn any new hires can be shown 'how we do things around here'.

How often have you been working on a task or responding to an email when you are interrupted by an incoming message showing up in your alerts - the natural tendency is to click on the alert to see who the email is from and what it is about. According to a study conducted by the University of California on the cost of digital distraction, that simple distraction can take as much as 25 minutes for the individual to return to the original task on hand - no wonder we never seem to get anything done. The solution to this problem is to switch off all digital distractions and to put time aside to check e mails every 30 minutes and stick to it. Give it a try - switch off your alerts and set aside uninterrupted blocks of time for focused work - in fact why don't you give the Pomodoro Technique a try - it really works.

 Deleting unsolicited and junk emails every other day probably takes most of us way too long unless you have a good spam filter installed and you regularly go through your list of mails and ruthlessly ‘Unsubscribe’ from the lists you ‘Accidentally’ signed up for or better still assign them to the ‘Junk’ folder.


I learnt a good practice for email management a few years back called the ‘4D’ method:

• Delete it: the easiest of all the options and needs no explanation
• Do it: if the activity is going to take you 2 minutes or less, as soon as you click on the mail simply do whatever has to be done straight away
• Delegate It: that is of course if you are fortunate enough to have someone who you can delegate the task to, alternatively there maybe someone in your organization who is in a better position to handle the issue than yourself
• Defer It: Pop the email into your Task Manager with a Reminder date when you need to take action and forget about it till then.

Whatever method you use do not let your email take over your life – book time in your calendar once or twice a week to ‘Clean out' your inbox and while you are at it set up folders to file your mail into which should replicate your filing system on your main storage system or in the Cloud. All good house keeping. 

The key to not getting overwhelmed is to get yourself focused on one primary objective or goal – and to always ask yourself does each activity you undertake move you toward a specific goal and if it doesn’t you need to question why you are doing it in the first place. We can all be busy people and broke fools. 

Then once you hit that target start moving the line and stay focused on the end goal. If it doesn’t help you get closer to your goal, don’t give it any of your precious mental bandwidth!

I like to look at each day as being: Meaningful, Efficient and Profitable.

Easier said than done however... trust me, I know!

I am sharing this TED Talk of Mark Pollock and Simone George because I believe is a fantastic inspirational person for all of us including business people to listen and learn from and never to give up hope - he has been through so much and still smiles and carries on. Please watch and enjoy.

5 tips on how to create your Personal Brand

We all have a personal brand whether we like it or not – it is what people think and say about us when we are not in the room – it is not about our job, it’s about our essence and what people think are our core traits. Your Personal Brand is your reputation and what it is like in the minds of others, what people know you for, how they experience you, what they expect you to do and to say.

To establish your Personal Brand follow these simple steps to identify your key skills and traits:

1. Ask for feedback from people you know really well what they really think about you by writing down 5-10 key words, both positive and negative words they think describe you best. Ask them to clarify the words if they say ‘honest’ do they mean you won’t steal from your company?
2. What do you want your Personal Brand to stand for – answer / describe yourself under the following 6 key areas:
   • Values: What’s important to you
   • Drivers: What motivates you
   • Reputation: What others think about you
   • Behaviour: How you act in front of others
   • Skills: What you can do that others can’t
   • Image: How you look and dress
   Create a MindMap with your name in the centre with each branch as one of the key areas from above with sub branch’s that are words that sum up the area i.e. under ‘Values’ you could write ‘loyal’, ‘energetic’; under ‘Drivers’ you could write ‘problem solver’ etc

3. Think like Oprah – boil your Personal Brand down to the one key word or idea which you want people to know you by – identify that one core thing – in Oprah’s case people trust her and feel connected, her key trait is ‘Empathy’
4. Use Social Media, what do you engage with and say on line – this is the area you can create your own persona and presence but be careful what you say on line ast could come back and haunt you!
5. Take action by bringing your brand to life, push yourself to do more around your Personal Brand so others will identify with you. Use your passion and talent to gain recognition and make yourself in demand.

Your Personal Brand cannot be bought, nor made up – it has to be earned – the good news is it is never too late to improve your Personal Brand by focusing on who you are, what you are great at and what value you deliver to others. 

Remember your Personal Brand is all about your reputation – it is all about you!

If I can help you with your Personal Brand or LinkedIn Profile Makeover then give me a shout.

Are you struggling with trying to grow your business?

Are you having sleepless nights worrying about your business? Do you feel constantly overwhelmed, stressed out and out of control? Are your employees running your business ‘their’ way, constantly complaining and not delivering the service your customer wants?

Does this sound like you, all stressed out, exhausted or worse still thinking of throwing in the towel? I bet you thought none of these problems where planned when you decided to start your own business, right?

If you would like to get out of the daily grind in your business and be a Business Owner that enjoys your business and life while making the money you would like, there are two simple mindset shifts you need to make to start moving in this direction: 

1) You are now a Business Owner! One of the elite few who have made the shift. But this requires a completely different mind and skill-set than being an employee. You now need to start working “ON” your business rather than “IN” it! Without this shift, you will probably find yourself in the same place or maybe in a much worse position twelve months from now. 

2) Think of your business as a product rather than what you provide or do. What do I mean by this? Everything you do in your business should be all about developing a process and building equity. Have you seen the movie ‘The Founder’? If you haven’t then go see it. Its all about McDonalds Ray Kroc played by Michael Keaton who built the McDonalds brand into what it is today. Let’s face it McDonalds is not only a fast food chain but it is primarily a tried, tested and proven process to anyone that wants it and can pay the price to have it. Can you achieve such results in your business? 

What you need is a great product or service, well trained employees, a business process, a marketing system that works every time, a proven sales system, a financial system with KPI’s and an operations system. The objective is to leave nothing to chance in your own business, everything must work together like a well oiled machine.

Think of how you can build your business into a turn-key operation that someone else would want that can be duplicated. Now you have a recipe for success. You will be in a position to get your life back, make more money than you ever thought you could and sleep like a baby at night.

To create a business that will work without you it takes time with the right mind and skill set. You cannot be expected to do on your own. You need to employee the right people for the job that needs to be done and not necessarily like-minded people but people who will bring specific expertise with them and be able to work as part of a team. In a lot of cases it makes economic sense to employ specialists or consultants to oversee certain aspects of the business while it is evolving and growing. Learning from their expertise while you focus on other areas.

Having a business that works which is profitable and sustainable is every Business Owners objective! So, if you are struggling with your business, cash flow, marketing, sales, people, process etc. I would really like to have a chat with you and show you in just a few minutes how you can evolve and turn your business around. Click https://my.timetrade.com/book/8C2RQ to schedule a 30 minute call with me now! I look forward to hearing from you!