I’m throwing an interesting twist on the matter by including information on how to connect with me via Awayfind for urgent messages, as well as Twitter if you simply need to leave short blurb that I need to be aware of. I’ll have to ask Jared if he knows of anyone that is using Awayfind not just for e-mail management, but also for voicemail management.

I also signed up for YouMail so that I can receive my Voicemail via E-mail as well if someone does actually leave me a message anyway. This is a bit more of an experiment than anything else, so we’ll have to see what comes of this little experiment. I’ll try and update everyone in the coming weeks and see if this helps me better manage my phone’s voicemail queue.

About six months ago I became a devout Gmail user (I have had my account since the early invite only days, but never used it) for my personal e-mail accounts. This allowed me to aggregate all my accounts into a single location, with instant access anywhere that I had internet. Gmail was a big step to say the least, and something that constantly becomes a more useful decision as new features are constantly being added.

Unfortunately, this also lead to a single place for all the mailing lists, and spam (not that much is missed by the filter), to pile up in. I’ve automated my Outlook for my business related e-mails to death, but have never done anything with my Gmail account. In fact, I hadn’t used labels or archive or anything. This basically left me with a monster of an overgrown inbox. I had some free time on Thursday evening and began the process of streamlining and automating my Gmail account. With some judicious use of Gmail Filters (which I have to say are every bit as powerful as most full e-mail clients), a ton of labels, and a very liberal use of the Archive button I trimmed a ton of fat and old information from my inbox.

It was a long and interesting process, but something that was in dire need of being completed. I’m not quite done the complete automation and streamlining of my inbox (and I don’t ever really expect my personal e-mail to hit Inbox Zero), but already I’ve filtered about 75% or more of the e-mail that would have otherwise hit my inbox. It’s really a blessing, as this has probably cut a good 30 minutes a day from the need to manage my personal e-mails.

This is a good step in what I hope will become a renewed effort to making my own personal life as efficient as I try to run my business. If I make my own life even close to efficient as I have been able to build my business, I will hopefully be capable of adding another two hours or more a week that I can spend my undivided attention on my children.