How To Ignore Your Inbox Without Missing Important Emails [Gmail Tip]

Do you multi-task better than anyone you know?  Can you email, complete a real estate appraisal, have a phone conversation, and surf the web all at the same time?  You might be surprised to know that you are being less productive than you could be.  Some kinds of multi-tasking costs you more time than you think you save.

Eating french fries while driving your car is not the same as responding to emails while you complete a real estate appraisal.  You can’t really do two jobs at the same time that need your full attention.  You are not really emailing and writing a report at the same time, you are constantly shifting your attention from one thing to the other.  This shifting of attention takes time, and the more time it takes the less productive you are, not to mention the more your work might suffer.

Time is our most precious resource, and how we spend it ultimately determines how successful we are in life and business. via WebWorkerDaily.

One of the biggest time sucks and attention grabbers is email.  Email is a necessary tool for business but can bring your productivity to a stop if you let it.

How can you stop email from hindering your productivity?  By not constantly checking it!

Don’t keep your email client open all day and stop continuously check your email.  Constantly checking your email hurts your productivity by forcing you to shift your attention from the task you were working on.  Instead, schedule specific times during the day to check and process your inbox.

“Close my email?  You are crazy!”

If the thought of closing your email client, even for a few minutes, scares you, start with baby steps.  Close your email and only check it every 30 minutes.  No really, close your email.  The world will not stop and your business will not crumble.  Eventually you can work your way up to only checking your email every few hours or maybe only a couple of times a day.

“But I have to have my email open or I will miss important emails!” If this was your thought, then I have a solution for you:

How to set up Gmail to forward important emails to your cell phone.

You will need to sign up for a Gmail account if you do not already have one.

Step 1: Click on the setting button at the top of your Gmail:

Step 2: Click on Filters on the Setting menu:

Step 3: Click on “Create a new filter” button at the bottom of the page:

Step 4: Create a new filter:

For example:  Let’s say you wanted to forward all of the emails for new real estate appraisal orders from a certain Appraisal Management Company, we will call the company Acme AMC, to your cell phone.

First, enter “ *@acmeamc.com ” in the from box.  The star character “ * “ is a wildcard character.  This will allow any email from the domain acmeamc.com to be filtered (bobby@acmeamc.com or sam@acmeamc.com, etc)

Second, enter “new” or “order” or whatever the subject of the email is from this AMC in the subject line.

Then choose to forward those emails to your cell phone:

You can send an email to your cell phone as a text message.  Below is the email addresses you would use depending on your cell phone carrier:

For AT&T or Cingular – number@cingularme.com, number@mobile.mycingular.com, or number@txt.att.com

For Verizon – number@vtext.com

For Sprint – number@messaging.sprintpcs.com (Sprint PCS) or number@messaging.nextel.com (Nextel)

Alltel – number@message.alltel.com

Click on to create your new filter.  That is all there is to it.  Every email from acmeamc.com with the word order or new in the subject line will be forwarded to your cell phone.

After you setup filters for your most important emails, you can close your email client knowing you will not miss any emails that need your attention.

With a little practice, you will hopefully begin to feel a sense of relief when you close your email and can focus all of your attention at the task at hand.  You will be surprised how much faster you can process your real estate appraisals (or any task your are working on) when you single task and can focus on completing your current task.

Do you keep your email open all day long?  Do you think you could go without checking your email for a few hours at a time?

Blog Post Image by smigol.

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Tagged as: Email, Gmail, Productivity, Zero Inbox