I get several hundred emails per day, but I’m in control of my email, and I promised someone I’d share my approach. Maybe you’ll find a hint or two in here that works for you. And as always, your mileage will vary, so if it doesn’t work for you, skip it and find a way that does. (Maybe Chris Penn’s method will work for you instead).

First, Break All The Rules

Like it or not, your email is no longer simply a distraction. It’s a core element to your work, because the more distributed our systems are, the more we rely on it to connect people and dots. So firstly, get your head into the reality that this is how we work now. We don’t have filing cabinets and binders and interoffice memos anymore, we don’t use the phone as much, we have email. Deal with it.

Secondly, you can set aside time to deal with email, or you can adapt to it real-time like I do (oh! The Horror!). The former means you have to be disciplined about your time, and have ruthless filters to find the things that matter in a definitive moment and set the rest aside. That’s fine if you work that way.

The second means you have to be willing to scan, process, and redirect your attention continually, and have a system for parking information for later. It also means making decisions on the fly and putting your head back where it belongs afterwards. Everyone’s different. Either way is fine, no matter what people tell you.

And for crying out loud, mess with the system when it doesn’t work. Hundreds of people will tell me I do it wrong. No such thing if it functions for you. Now, to the tools.

Gmail

Gmail is by far my preferred email interface. I’ve tried several clients, and none of them improve upon it in any exponential way. I like simple, so I stick with what I know and like.

• I use Mailplane for Mac to manage Gmail, and I have several email addresses there. I can log in or out of them easily. I also manage several from a single inbox.
• I use Priority Inbox. It *dramatically* cuts down on the noise for me, and I can demote or promote an email with a single keyboard shortcut.
• When I’m processing email in a big whack – say, after travel or an extended time away – I start with the oldest first and work backwards. Email is temporal and sometimes time sensitive, so this way I can go back in time and work forward rather than missing something older that needed my attention.
• I use the “Super Stars” function in Gmail Labs. I use a checkmark for actionable items, blue stars for actionable things I’m waiting on for other people, red stars for things that are overdue. Things that are FYI or sources of information get archived immediately using a label. I’ll find them later if I need the information, and if someone adds more to the thread, it’ll resurface.
• Thank heavens for the “Mute” function in Gmail. Buh-bye, abusers of the Reply All function.
• I use the Do, Delegate, Defer, Delete system. If it’s less than a couple of minutes *and* relatively important, I do it now. If it’s for someone else, I forward and delegate, and archive the email. If I need to act on it later but it’s a longer thing (or if I simply don’t have the couple of minutes right now), I use the SuperStars and defer it but leave it in my inbox and add it to my task list. If not any of the above, I delete it. More on that below.
• I process meeting requests in batches to try and avoid conflicts and assess priorities as a group. I use “Create Event” from emails in Gmail liberally, even if it’s just a task or reminder to myself for something that needs to be done at a certain time.

Evernote

I live in Evernote, and it’s probably my most heavily used application. Here’s a bit about how I use broadly here.

It collides with my email in one simple way: a task list. I’ve tried a zillion different task and to-do list applications, and I don’t care for any of them. Mostly because they don’t work within or aren’t habitual to my existing system, so I don’t adopt them fully, ever. (Too many apps decreases rather than increases productivity for me). All I really need is a simple checklist.

When I have an actionable thing from my email, I go to my to-do list (it’s the same one all the time, just maintained continually) and add a task with a check box. If it’s important, it goes on top, bolded, with a simple **. I know that things on my list that correspond to emails will be in my inbox with a checkmark star so I can find them quickly, and see at a glance how unruly my task list is.

When something’s done, I delete it. Simple.

In General

Get comfortable with the delete button. Some stuff you’re honestly not going to do or answer, yet you hang on to it out of guilt or fear you’ll lose important information you just might need later. Get over it, and delete it or archive it. If it’s really important, it’ll resurface. Remove it NOW so you don’t have the visual clutter in your inbox.

Unsubscribe from the noise. I mean now, right when you get the email that’s clogging up the tubes. Take two seconds, unsub, and reduce the volume of garbage you need to process. Do you really need to know immediately when DSW is having a sale?

Turn off email notifications from your social networks unless you need them as part of your work. They’re going to distract and interrupt you, period. Either get comfortable with that and quit whining that you get too much email, or stop letting Facebook email you cat pictures and go to the site itself when you have time to do so.

Email overload is as much psychological as it is real. That’s why you get the clutter out. We judge the magnitude of our obligations by what we can see in our inbox, and get overwhelmed when we just don’t know what’s in there awaiting us. Get out the clutter, leave behind only the stuff that really needs attention, and you’ll have a much better handle on what’s really waiting for you in there.

Unless your work is a matter of life and death, it’s not. It won’t kill you to miss an email, and if it’s really that damned important, the person reaching out to you needs to employ other mechanisms to track you down.

Now? Breathe and dig in.

* Not a typo. See here if you didn’t catch the geektacular reference.

A post from Brass Tack Thinking
How I Pwn* My Inbox At All Times

1. There are tools. There are people who use the tools. And then there are people who are tools. Know the difference.
2. Ass-kissing will get you anywhere, but where is that, exactly? Where do you actually want to go from there? Think long-term.
3. Speaking of long-term, “asshole” is not a long-term strategy. Neither is “edgy” or “off-putting.” What do you really want to achieve? And for how long? Build a strategy on that.
4. The vast majority of what happens in social media happens where you can’t see it. Don’t be fooled by what you think you see — it’s only a shadow of what’s really there. Pay attention to what, and who, is missing from the conversations.
5. Also, remember that what you think is private isn’t guaranteed to be. As Hugh Prather once said, “Live as if everything you do will eventually be known.” (Because it likely will be, and soon.)
6. For all the stories and panels and lovefests about how social media is, well, a lovefest, I suspect that just as many relationships (personal and professional) have been broken by social media as made. Would you be comfortable with that DM being public? If not, don’t write it. There are other forms of communication, you know (but only marginally more secure). And if you’re not comfortable with what you’re doing being made public? Yeah, don’t do it.
7. Everyone is in this for themselves at some level. Some people do that by taking others down. Some people do it by building people up. Some people act like they’re building people up, when really, they’re just assigning you a debt you’re not aware of, and expect you to repay. Understand intent – yours and theirs.
8. A lot of this is just a game. The rules aren’t very hard to learn. But there is more than one set of rules. Do you know which set you follow? Do you know which set they do?
9. Your rules aren’t my rules. They’re different. That doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Back off. There are multiple lanes on this road.
10. Saying one thing and doing another? Also not a long-term strategy. Much better to walk your talk. Easier, too.
11. To quote a very good friend, “The Internet will not fix whatever happened in high school.” So move on. If there’s something about you, or about the way people interact with you, that you don’t like, change it. Complaint is tantamount to complacency. DO something.
12. All those people who say it’s quick and fast? They’ve got a short-term focus. If that’s yours, too — great. If not, run the other way. If you want long-term results, pay attention to those who speak in the long-term. Being human takes time.
13. And? Time reveals all, to those paying attention. So: pay attention.
14. Expertise is self-evident, not self-appointed. Beware of hyperbolic descriptors – yours or otherwise. You don’t get to say, really, what you are. We do. Are you listening?
15. Entitlement has no place here. The time people spend reading what you put out there? It’s a gift they’re giving you. What are you giving in return? Have you made it worth their while? The minute you start to feel you owe them more than they owe you? That’s probably when you’ve got the balance right.
16. Call it what you will — reposting, featuring, scraping — plagiarizing is a dick move. Do you your own damn work. Write your own damn stuff. You’ll be more passionate about it anyway. (And won’t be exposing yourself as a charlatan.)
17. Bandwagons get full quickly. Start your own.
18. To quote another very good friend, “The plural of anecdote is not data.” Which is why case studies are pretty much useless. As are generalized prescriptions of what works. Following others’ maps guarantees you’ll be part of the herd. Stop taking direction. Set yours. Draw your own map, monsters be damned
19. You can’t fake human. Nor can you humanize fake. Trust that what you are, and what you do, has value somewhere, to someone. Your job is to articulate that value, and find your audience. Yes, it’s hard. Get over it.
20. If you haven’t done it? Please stop talking about it. You’re annoying those of us who have. Talk about what you know, not what you think you know.
21. Happy feelings are not ROI. ROI means RETURN ON INVESTMENT. That’s it. Stop mucking it up to cover your unwillingness to actually measure things. Yes the types of return that are valuable change depending on what results you’re looking for. But if you’re not willing to be accountable, in this space or any other, get out of the game.
22. Social media is not a new way to sell. There’s only the old way. You just have new tools. (And, um, please refer back to #1:) Use them wisely.
23. Being human, and interacting like one, is hard. Automation makes some parts easier, but you still have to do the hard work. Accept it, plan for it, hire for it.
24. Personal and professional cross here. As Amber says, if you can’t handle that, get offline. If you don’t have a choice, then find a way to make it work for you and whoever’s writing your checks (which, if you’re lucky [i.e., you do the hard work], is also you).
25. Yes, there is a culture of complaint. But squeaky wheels squeak for a reason. Figure out why. They may not speak for everyone, but they speak for some, and potentially enough to bring you, or your brand, down. Find the cause, and fix it.
26. The rules are not different for you. If you don’t like to be spoken to, sold to, marketed to, or interacted with in a certain way DON’T DO IT TO OTHER PEOPLE. I mean, seriously. Your doing it doesn’t make it better. Or acceptable. Don’t be a user. Be of use.
27. Oh, and if you want success in this space? Accept what comes with it. Yes that means a loss of privacy. And yes that means people will ask ridiculous things of you. Yes that means people will try to use you. Why is that a surprise? People are people. Social media just added microphones. And cameras. And speakers. Human behavior remains unchanged.
28. You choose what you put out there. Don’t be surprised that people know it.
29. Cliques exist. You’re in one (or many) whether you admit it or not. See them. Move between them. Use them for good. But please don’t pretend they’re not there. Disingenuous isn’t sexy. Also: not a long-term strategy, either.
30. And what’s with all the judging? Are you truly so free of fault? I know I’m not. Remind me to list sometime all the reasons I’m a bitch / hypoctrical /a lame-ass, whatever. My list of why I suck will always be longer than yours. I’ll worry the day it isn’t.
31. Authenticity is a state. Integrity is a mindset. Please learn the difference. You can only be what you are — even assholes are authentically so. You can only have integrity if you own whatever you are… and own up to it.
32. Takedowns for takedowns’ sake aren’t helpful. Neither is blind worship. You have a brain, use it. If you disagree, say so, and back it up. Question everything, but move the conversation forward.

You? What do you see? And how do we fix it?

A post from Brass Tack Thinking
Calling Bullshit on Social Media

Their whole premise is Ideas Worth Spreading.

I’m not on the TED stage. Yet. But in the meantime, I definitely love the premise of giving ideas legs. In this case, let’s talk about the presentations themselves, and how to let them stretch their legs and visit new places (provided they’re good; we can have a talk about creating good presentations in another post). Perhaps your ideas will spark ideas in others, too, and inspire them to and think even more. Yay, collective good!

1. Use Slideshare.

I know many of you probably know about Slideshare so I apologize if this is one of those “duh” things for you. But if you don’t, I want to make sure you see it. Slideshare lets you upload your presentation in several different formats, tag the presentation with keywords, and provide a short description. Here’s the one I’m doing at Inbound Marketing Summit this week in Boston.

On Slideshare, you can elect whether to allow folks to download the slides themselves, and Slideshare’s handy embed code means that you and other people can share those slides in all sorts of places.

Here’s the Amber Naslund Slideshare page where I’ve got a bunch of presentations and a handful of ebooks. The image up here is the presentation deck itself.

2.  Make the most of Delicious links

Want to give your audience some additional materials to reference after your presentation? Use Delicious.com and create a custom tag for the event (like I did for the Monitoring Social Media event at which I’m speaking today. Here’s the presentation, too.). Curate some materials from your own website or content library, or collect some related articles and case studies from across the web. And try using a customized Bit.ly shortened link so you can track the traffic that comes through it.

Bonus points: I keep an ongoing collection of social media case studies on Delicious, too. They’re handy to point people to in general when they ask for more examples.

3. Summarize your talking points. And share them.

If you’re helping people map out planning of some kind, give them a slide at the end that has some questions to take home and ask themselves. Perhaps you’d be willing to create a PDF to accompany your presentation that outlines what you talked about (if that’s relatively straightforward to do). Write a blog post that runs down the highlights of your presentation, and stick that handy Slideshare embed link in there to allow people to click through or download the slides themselves.

Oh, and if you do that post, don’t forget to link to your speaking page (you do have one, right?) so that readers can see what other types of topics you speak about.

4. Include your contact information.

Put your name, company, email and social profiles on the first and last slides at the very least. This one actually gets missed a lot, and it’s the simplest of things to fix. I’ve found my Twitter and email to be the ones most needed and used.

For a crowd that can be particularly Twitter happy, think about including the event hashtag and your Twitter handle in the footer of each slide or a couple of strategic locations (I ignore my own advice on this sometimes because I get picky about how the slides look, but see if it works for you). Build your email list by having folks email you a phrase or code (with explicit disclosure, please, about that being an opt-in) and offer them some extra bonus content, links, or resources. Got a SMS option? Get folks texting something right as your presentation winds to a close.

If people love your presentation, allow the opportunity for extended dialogue and business inquiries by making your contact information super easy to find.

Presenters, Tell Us Your Tips!

Tell us more about how you get your presentations out there and traveling the world. How do you follow your stage time to keep people connected and talking after the workshop is done? I’d love you to share your favorite presentations, point us to your own, or at the very least get up there and watch some of those TED talks. I promise that something in there will turn your mind upside down. In a good way.

Share on below…

A post from Brass Tack Thinking
4 Ways To Give Legs To Your Presentations