Tip of the Week: Email Boomerang Effect

“I have been at my desk for a half an hour and I have yet to start anything remotely productive.” If you have never said that to yourself, then please contact me so that I may study your time management secrets.

For everyone else, why do we do this? It seems to take a while to gather enough momentum to tackle tough projects. During this slow period, I try to complete as many menial tasks as I can so that I feel like I’m accomplishing something. The biggest of those is cleaning my email inbox.

It would require a lot of self-control and practice to stop myself from checking my email before getting started on work. Instead, I want to reduce the time spent perusing old emails. Thanh Pham, a writer of the time management and productivity blog Asian Efficiency, has given us a strategy to do just that. He refers to what he calls the Email Boomerang Effect – the more emails you send out, the more emails you will receive.

His strategy is simple – send fewer emails. We all know those people who abuse their email privileges. It’s not just the jokes, chain letters, and news articles. Pressing “reply to all” instead of “reply” or CC’ing people who don’t need to be CC’ed are common email faux pas as well.

Both sending and reading emails take up valuable minutes of your day. Cutting back on your sent emails will also reduce your received emails, and you’ll find your saved time adding up. All you have to do is ask yourself two questions before sending an email:

Is this ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY?
Is email the best medium for this message?

Confirm that only the people that need to see the message are receiving it, and that the message you’re sending is truly worth an email. “Thanks” and “I’ll send it when I get back to the office” are not (always) worth an email.

If you have email time saving tips, we would love to learn them. Please include them in the comments below!

Still not convinced that Software as a Service (SaaS) is the way for your business to go? Our team recently conducted research on why business owners prefer SaaS over traditional software. We surveyed 50 legal, consulting, accounting, creative, and tech firms to find out the greatest user benefits of SaaS. Firms were asked to list their top reasons for using SaaS. Here are the 6 most mentioned reasons:

• Accessible Anywhere – available on all computers via the Internet and mobile devices and even via desktop apps that do not require Internet access.
• Saves Time – firms can focus more on the business and less on back office work
• Increases Productivity – ability to work from anywhere at anytime and work more efficiently due to improved team collaboration
• Reduces Costs – reasonable monthly fees and cuts redundant business expenses
• Increases Security – if computer system failure occurs on a computer, users can be rest assured that they will never lose important documents since all data is continually backed-up on multiple servers.
• Access to latest software releases – Continual access to upgrades and the latest software version with no downtime.

You’ve already been using SaaS if you use Gmail, Google Documents, Google Calendar, Hotmail or even Facebook. Reviewers and users will tell you why leading-edge SaaS products like Salesforce, MailChimp, Bill4Time, iContact, Xero, Zoho Books, DropBox, Highrise CRM, HubSpot, Gist and more are among the best, most popular, and affordable choices for small businesses.

Download the full report: Switching to Software as a Service – The Convenience and Benefits of Cloud Based Applications, written by Bill4Time Co-Founder Jeremy Diviney.

What are your thoughts on using SaaS versus traditional software? If your business uses (or doesn’t use) SaaS products and you have something to say about it, feel free to share with us and our readers in the comments section below.

This is a philosophy that at some point or another, we’ve all followed. Procrastination, it seems, is part of human nature. But recently, I’ve been trying a different approach. Classic American radio host Bernard Meltzer once said, “Hard work is often the easy work you did not do at the proper time.” He’s right. Everything seems infinitely more difficult, not to mention stressful, when the deadline is rapidly approaching. But eventually, you will reach the light at the end of the tunnel. And who doesn’t enjoy that huge wave of relief after finishing a tough project?

When I have a task left to finish – a report, an errand, maybe even a blog post, for example – I can always sense the clock ticking. Every so often, the voice in the back of my head goes “Hey, remember that task you didn’t do?” I used to be motivated by that voice. I wouldn’t get work done until I felt my life depended on it. This habit developed in high school, but it solidified in my undergraduate years. But when you’re a small business owner with clients waiting on you, wasting time is not an option.

But there is hope, fellow procrastinators. The key to beating procrastination is knowing why you do it. Look first for your excuses: Maybe you’re waiting for the right mood, or the right time of day. Sometimes, the task is too vague – if you don’t know what to do, you’ll just stop working. Don’t! Make a decision and stick to it. Lack of confidence in your work can be your biggest enemy. Remember, your clients decided that your skills are worth spending their hard-earned money on, so have faith in your abilities. Once you’ve caught yourself making an excuse, get over it! Often you’ll find that you are the only one stopping you from making progress.

Don’t blow the task out of proportion. If you don’t see the end in the near future, then at least start! Once you get some momentum, you’ll realize that it’s not as hard as you built it up to be. Sometimes the plan has to fall into place; it isn’t always obvious right away. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

Besides, with technology as it is today, the excuse of “being busy” is obsolete. The modern business person has a smartphone loaded with all of the necessary applications to get work done. You can check your email, reply to a client, and even send invoices from anywhere – the courtroom, the restaurant, or even the bus/train. Increasing your efficiency can be done with the swipe of a finger.

Lastly, treat yourself! You deserve to be rewarded for your hard work. Setting goals and schedules is the key to time management. When I reach a goal I’ve been working at for a long time, I celebrate. Go out to dinner, grab a drink, or enjoy some relaxation.

By now, you’re hopefully excited – you can’t wait to get that project out of the way and be free to relax in the sunshine. The next time you have a task to accomplish, do it right away. You’ll notice that feeling of achievement, and be inspired to do more. All of a sudden, the project is done, the client is happy, and your invoices are paid. It is then that you can give yourself a pat on the back.

Until then, this article is over. Don’t you have work you should get back to?

If you have any tips or success stories about overcoming procrastination, we would love to hear from you. Feel free to share with our readers in the comments section below.