Creating Clarity And Direction Daily

Hey there!

This is Chris again. You know I'm a business consultant and also a Facebook media buyer, so I need to be organized to thrive.

Basically, what I want to talk to you about is tracking things. You can check out the complete blog HERE.

We all know that it's important to be really aware of what's going on in our business, in our lives, and be self-aware, so then we can make really good decisions once we know that that's going on.

So one of the things that I make a point to do on a daily basis is to take notes and write down answers to certain questions.

So I use a journal every night, some kind of notebook. I keep it right by my bed and I unload my thoughts to answer certain questions in this journal every night.

I can kind of get some stuff down on paper, get it out of my head, and then write down what I want to do the next day and start to formulate what my plan is. So then I kind of have it all set,   I know when I'm gonna work on stuff and I get a good night's sleep. And I even wake up with new ideas sometimes because I do that, which is really helpful.

So the other piece of that is using a digital note-taking system for email management, which has really changed my life professionally.

What you want to realize is that your email inbox is not a to-do list. You don't want to treat email like it's a to-do list because then, what ends up happening is your communications become chaotic and get interrupted.

So you'll hear some people talk about being an inbox zero. And the reason for that is they've eliminated distractions from their inbox. I do this too.

So I will mark messages from places that I don't see as relevant as spam. I use that spam button very liberally too if I know it's not something that's gonna affect my life or my business.

And I can't read every marketing email, right? So I use that spam button liberally.

there are two types of emails that come in:

• Action items: Something that I need to work on and do.
• Reference items: things that I need to remember or keep.

So if I don't already have a folder set up, I create one and then I put the reference item in it so that I can reference it later on if I need to.

Many systems, especially Gmail have a built-in filter system.

There are emails coming in that are important, but they're just reference items. You'll probably look them up if you need to at some point, you can open a folder and just see a list of all of them so you can go through it.

You can just filter them automatically and go into those reference folders so you don't have to search for them every time. This saves you time and energy. 

For the action items. I use something called Evernote. So Evernote is a great note-taking software that is on my phone and on my computer, so I can reference it anytime in either place.

I can upload pictures to it, so it's great for capturing documents. It has a really cool feature where you can hover your phone over a document and it'll capture the document into it without getting the stuff that's around it, which is great for receipts, legal documents, and mail.

If I know I need it for later but I don't want to carry around the paper, I scan it into my Evernote and can get rid of the paper. Easy peasy, right? Less paper, less mess.

So I use Evernote for my email management and I have different sections there.

One of them is high-impact, another is waiting on other people, if I'm waiting on somebody else to do something I'll make a list so I know to follow up with them. And then project items, things that are long-term that I'm working on for a while.

So the high-impact priority is usually the to-do items. So if I get an email and say "Hey, I need to do this thing", I put that in my high-impact list on Evernote. And then I delete the email because remember, email is not a to-do list. Email is a spot for communication.

It would be like if I got mail to my mailbox and I went out to check my mail and saw that there's a bill that I needed to pay. And I said, "Oh, I'll leave that in my mailbox because I'll check my mailbox tomorrow, and I'll see that bill in there and decide if I'm gonna take care of it then".

No, I bring the mail inside, I open it, I look at it and then I go on my calendar and say, "pay bills on this date", and I put it somewhere on my desk, pay it, and then file it away.

I deal with it. You want to deal with it. So don't treat your inbox like a to-do list. It makes a massive difference in productivity. Use your filters and you're gonna be amazed at what you can do with your inbox.

And a lot of times you can get to inbox zero real quickly when you treat it that way. Instead of just letting it control you and letting the communication control you, you want to control it.

So just a few tips, I'm taking notes and journaling too. Just a few things that if you just implement them, I guarantee you'll get some value from it. 

So this is it for today! See you next time, I hope you're having a great day.

- Chris

P.S.

If you want to try Evernote you can use my referral link! Just check it out. I think you'll get a lot of value from it.