Thank you Santa for the gift I wanted most
December 27, 2008 by Rick Latona
I’ve often been quoted saying that what I do for a living is answer emails. It’s really all I do during the day and somehow, through this process, multiple companies are run.
In fact, I have little time for anything else. I answer emails at traffic lights, at 2 a.m. in the morning and often, rudely, during dinner with my family! I have to, if I don’t I’m screwed. I simply can’t keep up with them.
A couple of months ago I was on a flight from Atlanta to Las Vegas. The guy sitting next to me started talking about how many emails he got. So I bet him $5 that I got 4 times as much or more. We both checked the newest emails on our iPhones while we were on the plane and when it landed we checked how many new emails downloaded. He had 22 new emails come in during the flight, which would be a lot for a normal person. I had more than 250.
If you fill out a form on this site, I get an email. If you fill out a form on DigiPawn, I get an email. aeiou.com and a host of other sites, send me emails. Every penis enlargement and v1agra company on the Internet, sends me email. When I send out my newsletter I’m bombarded by replies that unfortunately are mostly people trying to sell me their names.
I can’t and won’t use spam filters because with so many tens of thousands of domain names, the subject matter of an email that I need to see could be about virtually anything.
Christmas falling in the middle of the week is a disaster for businesses. It means that New Years will also fall in the middle of a week. It means that the world is more or less shut down for two weeks.
Yes, I have been enjoying my holidays but I’ve also used this time of only thirty emails per hour to empty my inbox and task list. I have no more reminders on Outlook that I’m snoozing every five minutes. A cluttered desk is a cluttered mind and my mind is currently uncluttered.
For now.
As soon as I saw this line, A cluttered desk is a cluttered mind and my mind is currently uncluttered. I started to unclutter my desk and mind as well.Cheers
Yeah the killer of christmas and new year being the middle of the week is it kills business deals online for enduser domain sales that Im currently trying to pitch!
Im glad to hear you managed to clear your inbox and desk - It still amazes me how you manage to answer all of these emails!
I know as I have often sent you an email at various hours and normally get a reply within a short period of time!
Happy Holidays Rick!
I hope you and your family had a lovely Christmas and I wish you all the best for 2009!
Warm Regards,
Robbie
Best wishes over the holidays and hopefully in 2009 you will find a few assistants who can address 80% or more of the incoming email for you.
Happy Holidays Rick! I was surprised to read you don’t use spam filters. That boggles my mind. Might I suggest you at least try GMail for a short time… their spam filter truly is astounding.
If you use Gmail’s forward option, you’ll lose 99% of all spam - but you won’t miss it
I wrote an article last Feb, 2008 regarding outsourcing your e-mail service with Gmail. If you are interested to read it, here’s the link:
http://my.king.net/2008/02/outsource-your-mail.html or go to http://www.google.com/a/ for more detailed information.
Cheers for now,
EM @KING.NET
I feel like such a slacker… you have inspiried me to answer the 175 e-mails waiting for me… and all demand some type of detailed response. Maybe I should just learn to use less words!
Happy 2009 to you and the family.
I’m in the same non-stop e-mail grind. LOL
This first number below includes everything our mail server had to process and filter for 2008, over 10 Million e-mails. The server averages about 30,000 incoming e-mails per day which go through a series of filtration applications to process out spam and bogus e-mails. Ultimately about 1000 e-mails per day make it past all the server checking filters which then go through a final filter process on Thunderbird sorting into either the In Box or the Junk Folder. It’s quite a load and I do a quick visual check through the Junk just to see if any genuine e-mails got sorted incorrectly. After that about 100 to 200 e-mails are valid and genuine each day of which about 25 are saved for the archive folders.
Total E-Mails Received To Mail Server: 10,950,000
Total Saved For Archives E-Mails From In Box: 8,500
Total Sent E-Mails Saved For Archives: 6,600
Total Important E-Mails Archived: 15,100
I really think you should invest in Brightmail, it works for me (I dont like to use Gmail, Google knows enough about me already!!)
http://www.symantec.com/business/brightmail-traffic-shaper
Its a box you connect to your network, and after that you can concentrate on getting business done, its a small investment compared to how much time you get save the next couple of years.
The also offer less expensive solutions, but this one is a winner, good luck.