Bevin's Books & Consulting

04/09/2021

Email Boundaries

I was speaking with a teacher friend the other day who was expressing frustration with the way her school is managing online learning. Of all her struggles, the one that stuck out to me the most was her feeling of obligation to respond to every email the moment she receives the notification. This made my insides recoil.

As a business owner who works from home (or anywhere), I have a lot of flexibility and control when it comes to establishing the framework of how my business runs. I can choose my working hours. I can choose who to work with. And most importantly (for this post at least), I can choose how and when to respond to people. I don’t mean that cavalierly. Certainly, if I don’t respond to people within a reasonable amount of time there could be myriad problems. However, working within an established framework that clearly delineates my boundaries not only alleviates the stress of constantly responding to emails, but it also makes my work time more focused and productive. And even if you don’t find yourself with as much flexibility and control as I have, you can make improvements to your habits surrounding email.

Try asking yourself the following questions:

1. Why do I feel the need to respond immediately?
Did someone tell you that an immediate response was necessary? Do you think it makes you a good employee? When was the last time you heard about someone getting a raise because they were the fastest at responding to emails?

2. What would happen if I didn’t respond immediately?
Seriously, if you responded within 24 hrs vs. 24 seconds, what would happen? When you send an email do you sit around and stare at the screen waiting for a response? Probably not. What would really happen?

3. What can I reasonably do to fix this situation?
Can you talk to your boss about a 24hr or even (gasp!) 48hr turnaround time? Can you set up automatic responses to certain email addresses that say you’ll respond within 24hrs? Can you simply set boundaries, stick to them consistently, and see how others respond?

Go ahead and give this a try. If you’ve done something like this in the past, how did it go? What worked and what didn’t? I’d love to hear.

04/02/2021

Customized Email Address

This week’s tip is a good one! I recently discovered this and I’m already hooked. Have you ever needed content from a website, but in order to access it you have to give them your email? Well, Gmail has this nifty little feature to handle all of these resulting emails without creating a filter for each one.

At the end of your username add a plus symbol and an identifying word before completing with your domain. For example: USERNAME+[email protected]. Gmail just ignores everything after the plus sign. Now, create a filter (See my post from March 5th) for +junk to mark as read and archived. Now, all such emails will be automatically handled.

One filter, many emails handled. I love it!

03/26/2021

Gmail Templates

Do you find yourself sending the same email again and again? Do you get that itch of inefficiency when you do it for the 3rd time in one day? Well, Gmail templates might be just the thing you need.

Gmail allows you to store up to 50 templates at a time. One of my favorite ways to use templates is to have an automated response go to certain emails without needing to open them. Such a time saver! Follow the link below from The Verge for information about how to start using templates and use them as automated responses. Enjoy!

Save that email and use it later

03/19/2021

Undo Send

Ever regret sending an email? Maybe you spotted a glaring error as you clicked send? Or maybe you realized you just replied all when it should have only been to one person? You may already realize that Gmail gives you the option to “undo send” because it pops up in the lower left of your screen, but did you know that you can change the settings to give yourself more time to undo that terrible email you just sent? Oh yes!

This one’s super simple so no attachments or videos this week:
In the top right, click Settings See all settings.
Next to "Undo Send," select a Send cancellation period of 5, 10, 20, or 30 seconds.

That’s it. Your welcome. :)

03/12/2021

Protect Your Work-Life Balance

My first question, “Why are you working at 9 pm?” My second question, “Why are you sending emails with that timestamp?” I understand there may be an occasional need to compose an email outside of business hours, but unless it’s a real emergency (like puppies and kittens are dying), there’s no reason for your email to have an after-hours timestamp.

You have business hours for a reason and the more you teach, yes teach, your clients that you are available 24/7, the more they will demand your attention at all hours. That’s why scheduling emails is an awesome Gmail productivity feature. You just click the schedule send button, pick a time and date, and voila! Task handled. You don’t have to create a reminder to remember to send it later. It’s just done.

Here’s a step-by-step from Google Support (https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/9395629?hl=en&ref_topic=9282737). And here’s a short video from Flipped Classroom Tutorials (https://youtu.be/ExFpgmxbDHQ). Hope this helps!

Huge update to Gmail! You can now natively schedule your emails to go at at a specific date and time. Schedule all your important email ahead of time and mak...

03/05/2021

This week, I want to talk about one of my favorite Gmail productivity tools: filters and labels. Filters and labels are, by far, the number one thing that enable me to hit inbox zero every day. While it can take some effort to set this up initially, editing and maintenance take mere seconds as you move forward with your new habit.

When I first started using filters and labels, I wanted to create a way to easily separate emails into distinct buckets for each of my clients. I started by creating a filter for each client that recognized their .com so as to include emails from everyone in their organization and not just my primary contact. Over time, I also created filters for auxiliary emails like payroll confirmations and tax updates. With each client’s label being assigned a distinct color, it’s easy to spot them at a glance. And when I’m working on a project for one client, I can click on their label to the left of my inbox and only see emails relating to that particular client. It really helps keep distractions to a minimum.

Here’s a link from Google Cloud (https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/g-suite/how-to-master-gmails-advanced-search-and-labelling) that explains the basics of making filters and labels. I’ve really started to enjoy Tasia Custode Powell's YouTube explanations for Gmail productivity (https://youtu.be/rNrCiRwMiMs), so here’s another one of her videos that gives an in-depth explanation for how to get the most out of this feature. Hope you enjoy!

Learn how to use Gmail filters in this Gmail filter tutorial! Subscribe to my YouTube Channel for more content like this: https://www.youtube.com/user/TasiaC...

02/26/2021

What's Your Type... of Inbox?

Did you know that Gmail allows you to choose from 6 different inbox types? I discovered this about 2 or 3 years ago and after trying all 6, turns out I’m all in on the Default version, with a few customizations.

What's my favorite part about using my customized Gmail inbox? I’ve had this email since 2005. Back when you needed an invitation to join. Yes, I’m THAT old. Lol! Over the years, I’ve subscribed to a lot of useless junk. Having all my promotions in one place makes it easy to unsubscribe from the ones I don’t need. I now receive far fewer emails on a daily basis and I never feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of items in my inbox.

But what floats your boat?

If you would like more information or to try these out on your own, here’s an excellent flow chart/decision tree (https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/9282729?hl=en #) for selecting your ideal inbox from Gmail.

And for you visual people out there, Tasia Custode Powell's YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlnGEMF3d0o) runs through all 6 types and their customizations. There are great tips throughout the video, but if you’re only interested in picking your inbox type, minutes 03:40-05:40 lay it all out for you.

Learn how to customize your Gmail layout and how to organize your Gmail inbox. There are actually quite a few Gmail settings every user should know, but who ...

02/19/2021

I'm working with a client to become more productive in Gmail and thought I would post the tips we're working through here as well.

Today is my first post and I'll do these once a week with an action item for being better at Gmail. This may be for organization, productivity, or simply a cool feature you should try out.

Week One - Archive to Inbox Zero!!!

The idea here is to never delete an email (especially since you are a business and businesses need to keep ALL correspondence in case of litigation), but to completely clear it out so you don't have a bunch of clutter occupying brain-space. That space is limited and PayPal credit offers have no business being there!

Here's an interesting article explaining how to archive, and better still, why you should even bother building the habit (3min read):
https://philfreo.com/blog/archive-your-emails/

If you're someone who prefers learning from videos (although I still think it's a great article and you should read it anyway) here's a how-to for bulk archiving (https://youtu.be/Zix1nZZwY2g), and here's a visual (https://youtu.be/nL8IMKFkna8) for some additional points on archiving. Be sure to watch the entire video before trying it out yourself.

When it comes to managing email, most people adopt one of these strategies: 1️⃣ Save everything2️⃣ Delete everythingIn my opinion, BOTH strategies are BAD! I...