The Buzz Fall 2008
Back to Basics
Organizing your email is a great way to stay on top of your work life.
Fall is the time of year when we get to start over after a summer of vacationing and enjoying the outdoors. If you are in business, you may not be starting over, but you may want to get back to some activities that you neglected over the summer.
One of those activities might be organizing your email. First and foremost, clean out your deleted and sent boxes. If you need to keep any messages, create separate folders for them under the inbox folder. I did this recently and it made a huge difference in finding emails that I needed to refer to again. I titled the folders according to the person or organization that they came from. Instead of printing them all out and saving them, this task saved me paper and anxiety over where to put the message and where to find it when I needed it.
You can create a pending folder, as you would for hard-copy papers, where you store sent messages that you are waiting for a response. Check it daily and delete or move the message to the appropriate folder.
Other folders you might consider setting up are: read/review, reference, newsletters. Having a place for email messages makes tackling them easier and more efficient.
Here is an idea to help you organize those pesky cables. Go to www.onlineorganizing.com and look under products, cable organizer to purchase this terrific product.
Keeping your email organized is another way to reduce stress and make you more productive every day.
If you would like some help organizing your email, contact Barbara Boone for a free phone consultation at 443-854-3563.
Recent Client Stories
I am often asked if I organize rooms in the home since I focus on business organizing. I often start out in the home office and if a client wants me to organize another room, I will.
I recently worked with a client organizing her photos for several sessions. She changed her work from full-time to part-time and had more opportunity to tackle additional projects.
We organized her basement. She had done a lot of the prep work before I stepped in. We did not have to do much sorting. We found containers for the items that she wanted to keep and I labeled them with my electronic label-maker.
Most of my job dealt with taking bags of donations out of her house and to the Goodwill site near my home. I took 81 books to the local library where they sell them. My client received the donation letter for her tax records. I do not charge extra for this service unless I need to make several trips.
I have done kitchens, childrens' rooms, bathrooms, self-storage units, and supply closets. I enjoy all organizing projects.
"The Hamster Revolution" —Mike Song, Vicki Halsey, & Tim Burress
This is a terrific book for managing your email. It is written in a friendly, story-like form. You will find out how to reduce email volume, create email templates for your company, and a filing system for your email.
Out and About With Barbara
I am now the Education Chair for the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO). We are working on an Entrepreneurs' Academy that will be presented in the spring of 2009.Check out this organization if you are a woman-owned business.
