I work hard. I work a lot. Typically when I have some down time I don’t spend much time, if any, working on my own personal life, and trimming fat or streamlining my processes at home. I do enough of that on a daily basis with my business that I typically spend a lot of time chilling and watching TV and reading blogs, but not much thinking of ways to make my own life better.

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.