Anti-GTD advice: Managing your email and good customer service

You may be productive but your customer service blows

I don’t check my email every hour or four as GTD specialists seem to recommend.

I never check it at all because my email is always up and it checks itself every minute. I use the Gmail/Google Notifier combo and when someone writes, a little window pops up and tells me who’s writing and shows the first couple lines of their email. I hear a beep, glance up from my work for approximately .00003 billiseconds, see who wrote, decide if it’s important and respond or not. If it’s a client or potential one, I usually respond immediately.

“But Charlie,” you’re surely saying right now, “it takes time to glance up from your work. And I’ll bet by the end of the day, you’ve wasted 5 or 6 minutes doing so.”

Well, guess what. I’ve got 5 or 6 minutes. I don’t run my life or my business where I’ll implode if I check one more email. When I was in the corporate world that’s how things were. And that’s why I got out.

One of the things that bugs me about the GTD system, or rather one version of it I guess, is that email accountability goes out the window. Productivity specialists often recommend very intermittent email checking. They say check it only in the morning, or only in the evening, or every four hours.
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The 2 Reasons Your Life and Business Aren’t Expanding, Part 2: Delegation

Even if you don’t have teammates, you can still have a team

In Part 1, Waste we talked about how wasted time and actions (same thing, really) make it appear that you just can’t expand.

You feel you can’t work any more than you do, can’t make any more money and you’re tied to the desk with no relief in sight. Even if you’re making killer dough, you can just feel that you’re busier than you should be and can’t seem to make even more dough. And that is our Constitutional right, as stated in Article XII which reads:

“We the People can and should make as much dirty smelly filthy lucre as is humanly possible. Can I get a hell yizzle?”

The problem with waste is really a very simple equation:

If you give yourself 7 hours in a day to do your actual work and waste two of those hours, you’ve now got to work 9 hours instead of 7 to make up for the 2 you wasted. Then you’re late to pick up the kids, your wife and/or husband is pissed and now you’ve added stress to your life.
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The 2 Reasons Your Life and Business Aren’t Expanding, Part 1: Waste

“Even the pros get this one way wrong.”

Have you hit the ceiling with your own personal production or income? Are you ignoring your friends, not walking the dog and skipping meals just so you can get more work done? If so, this post and the next in the series are for you.

Writers can only write so many words in their allotted time, and a bricklayer can only lay so many bricks, right? So, how does one continue to make even more money and achieve one’s dreams no matter how lofty?

The unhealthy solution we’re always taught is just to work more hours. Be the first one to get to the office and be the last one to leave, right?

No way. I would never write a post for Ye Olde Readers that said, “Don’t have the money you want? Simple, just work harder and longer and all your dreams will come true.” How many millions of cubicle rats are never going to be financially independent, or even comfortable? Most of them.

The time/money combination, I am happy to say, is BS.

The beauty about what you’re going to read here is that it will work for you regardless of how much time you actually have for work. If your ideal scene is to spend 30 minutes a day working, this advice will work for you as well as for the guy who loves to work 16 hour days.
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A Human’s Guide to Freelance Living - FREE New Ebook!

A Human’s Guide to Freelance Living - FREE ebook!

A Human’s Guide to Freelance Living is a short manifesto about staying sane, happy and productive as a freelancer.

It features tips on finding ideas, staying organized, getting clients and ultimately making money doing what you love.

A Human’s Guide to Freelance Living is simple. It was born out of my philosophy on freelancing which itself is simple:

Get clients
Do for them what they want and what you promise
Make money
Repeat if necessary

Of course, there’s a little more to it than that, but that’s what the book is for. It’s my day-to-day guide on making things happen as a freelancer. It’ll make you laugh. It’ll make you cry. It even has a few bad words in it, so it’s perfect for grandma.

Here’s what people are saying…

“This is probably the best book ever written. Ever.” – the author
“I hated it. Every single word.” – some jerk
“We haven’t even read it. Maybe we’ll get around to it.” – my parents

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