In last week’s post I talked about the importance of setting goals. I’m happy to see that you have taken action. The eBook download have double since last week. Today we’re going to talk about what YOU can do to free up some time to reach your 2011 goals.
The biggest problem today are information overload and because of all these distractions, we waste our precious time. If you follow the simple tips listed below I’m pretty sure you can save at least 30 minutes each day.
Reading email :
Read email only two times a day, the best time is at noon and end of work. I will warn you that it’s hard, but for the email addicts that constantly check their emails 100 times a day will be overwhelm on how effective this simple step is.
Email, IM and other notifications :
- Turn off email envelope icon in taskbar, email alert and the “You got mail” sound
- Turn off email push to your smart phone and iPad
- Sign out of instant messaging or set status to Don’t disturb
- Turn off Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin email notifications
Create email rules :
Every time I leave for vacation I do a major mailbox cleanup. I create rules for emails that are sent to me as CC as well as distribution lists and organize them into folders. This way only important message shows up in my inbox whenever I would like to check it.
Make sure to unsubscribe from newsletters and sales offers you no longer wish to receive. For important newsletters like xenappblog make sure to create an rule to automatically move it into and folder. This way you will have a nice email archive.
Reading Twitter, Facebook and News :
Try to limit this to 30 minutes a day and check those at noon and end of the day when you’re finished reading and responding to your emails.
Subscribe to RSS Feeds :
To save even more time subscribe to interesting web sites by RSS. This way you don’t need to check these sites daily for updates, they are automatically delivered to your Google Reader. Check out this post How to stay up to date on industry news.
Be more productive when you’ve some free time :
When you’re waiting for the bus, train or your next dentist’s appointment be sure to use this “free” time to the max. Here’s a list of my favorite applications.
- Reeder for iPad/iPhone – Makes it very easy to stay up to date on new RSS feeds. It also allows me to share interesting articles to Twitter, Facebook, email, InstantPaper etc.
- Evernote for iPad/iPhone – Take notes and sync them to the cloud for easy access on a later time.
- iTAP RDP for iPad/iPhone – Connecting to my private cloud computer wherever I’m in the world. The Cloud server rental is as low as $21,60 a month – Move Your Office Into The Cloud.
- Worldmate for iPhone – This application keeps all my travel information for easy access. Whenever I buy a travel the receipt are automatically forward to Worldmate via an email rule.
I really hope this article helps you getting things done and getting more done in less time. If you have any other tips please leave a comment below to share it with the rest of the community readers.