Technology Quota - Email Solutions

I've seen an increase in the "badge of honor" syndrome among busy leaders. It is the swelling of the chest when a leader explains to other mere organizational mortals that they just don't have time to vacation, play, relax or in some cases, even sleep. It's an odd little interchange where one person is bragging to another about how busy he or she is which is intended to let the other person know how important they are based on the demanding schedule they must manage. I see it differently.

Everyone has the same 24-hours in a day. No one has proved to me yet that they have discovered a way to escape the commonly held day/night earth rotation. The problem comes then, with the use of their 24 precious hours.

The truth and tragedy of the issue is that some people do not prioritize or manage their time optimally. As a result they feel rushed and stressed, which their busy mind interprets as being important -- when they are just unorganized. There is hope.

For the overwhelmed, de-constructing our time so we can manage it more efficiently can be, well, overwhelming. A simple place to start is to introduce regular doses of technology into your daily routine. Develop the discipline of a technology quota to force efficiency in your routine. Commit to learning or applying one new techno-solution each week.

A great place to start for busy leaders is to more effectively manage your emails. Emails are digitized conversations. Much like verbal conversations, there are some in your email circle whom you want to interact with real time and others that you should ignore. The trick comes in differentiating them -- automatically.

A little organizational trick is to employ rules to sort your emails for you. If you use Outlook, use rules to color code and automatically file under the Organize tab. If Gmail is your email of choice it has many of the same functions including a slick little tool to identify emailers and then delete, archive or file automatically based on a unique address. Gmail allows you to customize your main email address so you and the Gmail software can recognize and react to members of groups (your deacons for example) or online spammers that may have received your address when you enrolled or purchased online.

Here's how it works on Gmail: Let's say your regular email address is pastorxyzabc@gmail.com. Gmail allows you to add words to your address in this way: pastorxyzabc+deacons@gmail.com by using a "+" symbol between the regular address and the additional word. You can use any word (+purchases; +family; +spam) and then allow Gmail to filter for messages sent to that address and handle them to your specifications. You can also insert "." in your address and Gmail treats it the same way. You could use pas.tor.xyz.abc@gmail.com to identify a specific emailer or group. Giving out customized email addresses will allow you to quickly identify emailers who matter and those who don't.

That's just one of thousands of email technology solutions to help you become more efficient in your time use each day. Set a weekly technology quota to keep you moving toward greater productivity while at the same time becoming more responsive to those who matter most.