Now I’m using a great tool called MailWasher Pro to stem the tide. MailWasher Pro is a program that you open prior to downloading your email that connects to your email server and allows you to preview incoming email messages without fully downloading them. So instead of waiting 5 or 10 minutes for a whole lot of junk email to download, you can view all incoming mail in about 15 seconds.

Then it uses a number of filters and learning tools to classify your email into “good” and “bad” groups. It also has a facility to easily “report” spam emails, which feeds back into a network of other users. This means that around 90% of spam emails are already correctly flagged when they appear in the program window.

Then you hit “Process Mail” and download only the emails you want to view - deleting, blacklisting or bouncing other emails non grata. I estimate that MailWasher Pro saves me at least 20 minutes a day - it’s definitely worth the nominal price and is a vital productivity tool.

From the Mailwasher website:

MailWasher works directly with your email server, exactly like your email program does. But there is one important difference: you can tell MailWasher to delete a message at the server, without downloading it - or you can bounce an email back to the sender so that it looks as though your address is not valid. MailWasher retrieves information about all the emails on the server. With that information (some of which is also processed by MailWasher) you can decide what to do with each individual email - download, delete, or bounce back. If you check your account with MailWasher first, you can delete or bounce the emails you do not want. Then, when you use your email program, it downloads only the remaining emails, those that you want to read. MailWasher can be thought of as a “first line of defence” which can weed out junk, large wasteful attachments, and potentially harmful viruses.

Where your time is your main productive asset, getting more done in less time - and having more than enough time for fun and relaxation - is hugely important (then there’s the issue of shifting from a time-for-money model to a more scaleable model, but that’s a whole other discussion).

In the past 2 weeks I have literally doubled my productivity by following a few simple rules.

I now work fewer than 40 hours per week and am earning 300% more than the same time last year, when I was working 60 hours per week.

Here are my…

7 Simple Productivity Tips

1) Only check email at 12 noon and 4pm (thanks to Tim Ferriss for this tip). This one simple step has been massively powerful and liberating all at the same time. This one saves me an hour a day, minimum.

2) Every evening I write a “For Action” list for the next day, outlining my 20% items that produce 80% of the results for the next day. Every day I attack my most important item first.

3) I keep my “For Action” list on my desk and when small “to do’s” or distractions pop into my head I make a side note so I can deal with small items in batches later on and not break my focus from the task at hand.

4) When checking email or attending to other smaller tasks, if a task will take 2 minutes or less I do it then and there (thanks to David Allen of GTD fame for this one)

5) I’ve replaced my mobile phone message with the following, at the suggestion of Marc Dussault:

“Hi, you’ve reached Will Swayne’s phone. I’m unable to take your call right now. Please leave your name and number, plus the reason for your call so I can get to work on it before I call you back. Thanks for calling.”

This simple distinction avoids the common scenario of playing phone tag just to find out the reason for a call before you even get around to doing something about it.

6) Being mindful of non-value adding steps in processes and working to reduce or eliminate them. In the past, when I was working on, say, a 5-step process, I might have been responsible for sequential steps A, C and E and a designer responsible for B and D.

I would often find myself supplying step A only, creating an extra communication loop in the process when C was required later on. Now I try to supply ALL information to eliminate the non-value adding steps in the middle.

Obviously this can’t always be achieved (for example, proofreading has to take place at the end), but just being mindful of this and taking action where possible has yielded some positive results and cut down on wasteful back-and-forth emails.

7) I’m in the process of implementing David Allen’s Getting Things Done system. While this is very much a work-in-progress (and something that I’ll write about in greater detail in future), some of the concepts have already come in useful for freeing up mental RAM. For example, I’ve closed off a few outstanding projects (what David Allen calls “open loops”) that had been occupying my headspace for some time, leaving more mental bandwidth for the important stuff. I even surprised myself the other day when I located 4 separate documents for my accountant in less than 5 minutes!

Try the 7 steps

I’ll wager that these 7 steps will yield big results for you too when you try them. Do you have any additional low-effort, high-reward productivity tips you’d like to share? Leave a comment!

Over the last couple of days I’ve been experimenting with a new email management strategy:

Don’t open your email program until 11am 

The theory behind this is that if you check email first thing (as I used to do), you tend to get caught up in a range of non-essential, non-urgent busywork that can take up most of the morning and get your day off to a bad start.

By getting started on your most important item first thing, you make real progress and build up unstoppable momentum for the rest of the day.

Although this tip sounds simple, I estimate this one idea alone has boosted my productivity by at least 10% (although I was a heavy user to start with Your mileage may vary.)

Give it a go and let me know how you get on.  If you have other simple 1-minute productivity ideas, leave a comment.

Have you actually calculated how much time spam email costs you every week to download, sort and delete? 15 minutes a day is over an hour per week of lost productivity…

Recently I came accross and Anti-spam program called MailWasher Pro that is already saving me hours every week.

Why I like MailWasher

Many anti-spam solutions that I’ve seen suffer from one or more of these problems:

1. They’re too agressive - they eat up legitimate emails
2. They’re not agressive enough - they allow tonnes of dodgy emails through
3. They can be circumvented and rendered useless by inventive spammers

MailWasher overcomes each of these problems. Here’s a quick summary of how it works:

Sorting Emails and Nuking Spam is Fast!

Because you only see a preview of incoming emails without downloading the whole message, MailWasher is lightning fast - no more waiting for dozens or hundreds of rubbish emails to clog up your inbox before you get a chance to delete them.

Reduced security risk

Because you don’t actually download emails to your computer until they have been sorted by MailWasher, malicious emails with viruses attached never even reach your computer.

MailWasher is a fast learner

When I first purchased Mailwasher Pro after previewing the Free Version, I found that for the first week or so I had to keep an eye on the automated sorting function to ensure that mails were sorted correctly.

But ever since flagging most of my “friendly” email addresses and blacklisting others, the learning filter has taken over and the program functions brilliantly. Previewing and sorting 100 emails now takes less than 1 minute.

MailWasher Versions and Prices

Even if spam email is costing you only 15 minutes a day, that’s 50 hours you’re sacrificing every year based on a working year of 200 days. Then multiply that by how much your time is worth to you (your hourly rate)…

Convinced yet?

So, how much does this little baby cost? Well, there are two versions, the Free Version and the Pro Version. Here’s how the versions compare.

Why I use and recommend the Pro Version

• MailWasher Pro allows multiple email accounts
• It has a built-in “learning filter” which increases speed and accuracy.
• It integrates with the First Alert global spam database which allows automatic screening and flagging of 95% of spam email
• It is an absolute no-brainer at only USD $37.

So if you want to free your inbox of clutter and claim back countless hours every year, grab MailWasher!

Will Swayne On-the-warpath-against-spam

That puts Google Maps in direct competition with the Yellow Pages, and the YP people must be none too pleased, because Google Maps is, well, a lot better.

The Consumer’s Perspective

Mmmm…..mappy goodness. Google Maps has gone straight into my favourites. One of the reasons why I like it is that it combines some of the best features of Google Search, whereis (direction finder) and the Yellow Pages into one site.

I’m having a smash with a friend at the golf driving range tonight so I did a search for “oxley golf course oxley rd oxley brisbane”, which returned the following results:

I was impressed by the variety and depth of info returned, including:

• Addresses, phone numbers and websites
• Other related businesses in the area
• Driving directions
• “Golf” and “Oxley” related contextual ads
• Links to related categories

Enough said - give Google maps a try.

The Marketer’s Perspective

From a marketing perspective, I believe that Google Maps is significant because it more deeply integrates search with purchasing context. Let me explain…

One reason why Google Adwords produces such a solid ROI is that the ad appears exactly when a user is searching for a product or service - the search and the solution (ad) are closely connected in time.

Now, Google Maps results enable searches and solutions to be more closely connected in time and space. For local businesses, this should mean an even higher return from Google Adwords.

Obviously, any effect will be proportional to the number of people who use Google Maps, so it will be interesting to see how quickly Google Maps is adopted in Australia.

This comparison of searches for “Google Maps” vs “Yellow Pages” reveals that in Australia at least, the YP has a solid lead [note that the data are around 3 months old at the time of writing] - it will be interesting to see what happens over the coming months.

Other services just round the corner

Google Maps is the first of the Google “local” services to reach Australia - others are no doubt in the pipeline (e.g Google Local integrated with Mobile services). I believe these will have a significant impact on the Internet search space when they arrive.

Looking out for them and thinking about how you will use them before they arrive is an excellent way to get the jump on your competition.

Will Swayne Internet Optimiser

While I don’t have much experience working with this metric, I felt that the description of my type was for the most part accurate.

If you’re up for an intesting exercise in self-analysis, why not take a free MBTI test here? Do you agree with the results? Did you pass? =D

I’ve been snowed under by a spike in new customer enquiries after implementing a few changes in my business.

To recap, the key change I’ve made is eliminating copywriting as a stand-alone service to concentrate on online marketing and website lead generation projects.

The net effect of this is that we’re now working on much higher value projects that attract 10 times the fees of smaller projects but involve only 5 times the work.

I’ve also been working on my productivity and I find I’m getting more done with less stress. I’m in the process of writing a post about the specific changes I’ve made, the results and also a few challenges still to be overcome. Shouldn’t be too long now……

L8r

Will

In theory, this is easily possible. But will it work in practice? Here’s how I plan to do it…

80 / 20 Insights

The 80 / 20 Principle is one of my favourite rules of thumb. That’s because it’s widely applicable and relatively easy to apply in one’s daily life.

In case you’re not familiar with the 80 / 20 Principle, it says that in any system, roughly 20% of causes will be responsible for 80% of effects.

One application of the 80 / 20 Principle says that 20% of your time is responsible for 80% of your productivity.

What this represents is a great opportunity for productivity growth. If you work a 40 hour week to produce 100 units of productivity, then roughly 80% of those units are produced in only 8 hours (you may need some convincing that this is so. For conclusive proof, read Richard Koch’s excellent book, The 80 / 20 Principle)

My plan is to identify what my 20% of highly-productive activities are, then concentrate my efforts on them at the expense of my low-productivity 80%.

Theoretically, I could produce 240% percent of my current output working only 3 days a week by focussing on my most productive 20% of activities. I hope to get there eventually, but for the time being I’ve decided to aim to double my productivity working 4 days a week.

I’ve started by keeping closer track of my time and identifying what my high-value and low-value tasks are. At the moment my list looks something like this…

Very High Value Activities (the top 20%)

• Selling to interested prospects
• Online marketing strategy consulting

Medium Value Activities (the next 30%)

• Sales lead generation activities for my own business
• Quality assurance of web, sales copy and online advertising work
• Project management liaison with clients

Very Low Value Activities (the bottom 50%)

• Integrating web content
• Invoicing and Accounts Receivable
• Over-checking email
• Commuting (1.5 - 2 hours per day)
• Multi-tasking *
• Distracting work environment **
• Procrastinating

Notes:

• Multi-tasking is a real productivity killer. Time Management experts recommend that you work on tasks in larger time blocks, rather than jumping from task to task.

** A recent study revealed that poor workspace design causes the average office worker to waste an astonishing 1.5 hours a day looking for misplaced items and being distracted by desktop clutter.

Looking at how I’m currently spending my time, all of a sudden a 100% improvement looks not only realistic, but almost easy

The Plan

Cull Productivity Black Holes

1. Redesign my workspace: Clear away unneeded files and get rid of non-essential items on my desk.
2. Move to a home office: Eliminate commuting time (will have to watch being distracted by midday Oprah though)
3. Check email and blog comments no more than 3 times a day: No compulsive clicking the Send / Receive button. Writing and checking emails in one block instead of doing it many times a day.

Systematize and Delegate More Tasks

Many tasks such as integrating web content, project management of websites and invoicing etc. still need to get done. It’s just that I shouldn’t be the one performing those tasks when there are much more productive things that I could be doing. So I plan to…

1. Re-organise my project management systems: our current systems are not nearly as productive as they could be. By organising tasks differently I can free up time.
2. Training, systems and procedures: to make website and integration work easier to delegate while maintaining high standards.
3. Delegate project management: My new web designer Phill starts on Monday. He’ll become the key contact point for project management issues. This one thing will free up a LOT of my time.

Beter Time Management Practices

1. Keep a desktop “to do” list: to help keep track of tasks and priorities.
2. Less multi-tasking: structure work in longer, more focussed blocks.

Results to Come

I’ve started keeping a diary of my activities and results and I’ll report back a month from now on initial progress. If you have any great time management or productivity-boosting tips, I’d love to hear them. I welcome your comments and ideas.