Email Time Management!

“Staying connected to email has become a lifestyle more than a choice these days… take back your right to choose and free yourself to do other important tasks.” Heidi Richards


Last post I wrote about being addicted to your inbox. You know you are addicted if you have to check your e-mail several times during the day and it’s not for business!

Did you know you can set your e-mail to check itself?

I just found out that with many email programs including Outlook Express you can set your email program to check at whatever interval you set it for – you can check every five minutes, every 30 mintues, every hour or twice a day (I highly recommend the latter – which is much more efficient – and you will be amazed at how much more you can accomplish in a days time.

Here’s how you do it with Outlook Express: open OE and go to Tools, Options and choose the General tab. Look for the Send/Receive Messages section.

Choose "Check for new messages every (blank) minutes." Check that box and then choose how often you want your e-mail to be checked. Also, directly right below that option, there is an option that if your computer isn't connected to the Internet at the selected time you chose to check email, you may choose to have your computer not connect you, connect only when working offline or connect even when you are working offline.

If you use a program other than Outlook Express to manage your email, do a little research to find out if this option is available to you.

This is a more efficient way to stay “connected” to your inbox without being dependent on it.

Wishing you a great day... and more!

Heidi

Heidi Richards, Founder & Chief Visionary The WECAI Network - “Helping Women Do Business on and off the WEB™”
Our blogs: WE Magazine for Women and VirtualWomansDay

To download a Complimentary Copy of our latest eBook “GET IT WRITE,” visit - http://wecai.org/wwps/html/getitwrite.html

Are you Addicted to Your Inbox?

“I don't believe in email. I'm an old-fashioned girl. I prefer calling and hanging up.”
Sarah Jessica Parker

This is so frustrating! I have been trying to check my email for the past 2 hours with absolutely no luck! It appears that my inbox cannot connect with the server hosting my email. And I am about to go bonkers. You see, I have tons of work to get done today (yesterday was a holiday in the US) just to catch up with the week.

I have emails to check, emails to send, blog posts to write and more.

Today I realized that I'm an addict! And email junkie! Seldom a day goes by when I don't check email first thing when I get to work and again last thing before I leave the office for the day. In fact, since I started blogging I even open up email at home and check it! I'm addicted to my inbox!

Once I realized that I could not check email today, at least not right now, I thought, there's gotta be other things I can do besides check my email. So here I am writing a blog post about it, and hoping (praying really) that I will be reconnected soon.

It also got me thinking, just how productive can I be if I'm always online attached at the fingertips to my inbox?

After all, I have articles I can write, my magazine needs to be be proofread, bills could be paid (now there's a thought more painful than not being able to check my email), and I have lots of files to go through and clean out.

Is there a cure? Is there an Email Addicts Anonymous group I could join? And the real question is, do I really want to?

Oh, well since I am going through withdrawal I might as well get busy and start on some of those other items on my "to do list." Maybe I should take Sarah Jessica Parker's advice and use the phone!

Well, at least one of the items on my list is now done for the day :D!

Heidi