 Think Tech-A-Yay, civil engagement lives here. Aloha, my name is Matt Darnell with Comptile.Cloud. As always joined by Greg Jackson, also with one of my partners in crime at Comptile.Cloud. Today we're going to, as always, talk about some current events, but then Greg's going to go over some real things that people can do to help you manage your email box. That is one of the most significant points of stress for a business person, even for individuals that after lunch when you wake up in the morning and you get to work, all people think about driving to work without getting ready for work is what's going to be in my email box, in my email box, in the inbox. So we'll actually talk about some strategies for that. But first we'll talk about current events. This is something I found that really hit home for me and that I thought was something that I'd be able to use in my life and it's called Papa.com and it is kind of like Uber where you can rent a car, but you're actually renting a grandchild. So there are plans that you're able to do and they say you have to apply if you want to be one of their grandchildren, much like if you want to be drive for Uber or Lyft or those. So once you do that, once you join, you pay a monthly plan like say $15 a month or $30 a month and then if you need some compassion or fellowship or technical support, you pay by the hour after that and that's about $40 an hour. And for my mother-in-law, for me not to get the call of my printer's not working or because for $30 a month, you can interview and then you can request the same person to come back each time. That is the cheapest tech support that I've ever heard of. $40 a month per hour once they come, but I mean rent a grandchild, because she's in California, we're out here in Hawaii. So to me that's just, I mean that's taken that model. What? You don't have grandkids anymore. You're going to rent them. How far is it going to go? What else do we own today that we think you're going to rent and not like rent furniture where it's always in your house, but rent for a short time, airplanes, your house, that's like a hotel, but like for hours and we're not talking about a hotel stay, but it's like chairs at the beach, you know, you rent by the hour. Just this whole shift of I don't need to own it. I don't want to own it, whether it's grandkids or what, it's just amazing how the technology is coming forward with that. Experience as a service. Right, exactly. And depending on what you need, they have different people, if you need compassion or just someone to go shopping, you know, every week you want to go shopping with Susie or Ray or Johnny or Betty or they'll go shopping with you and take you and it's just amazing how, I mean, who would have thought renting a car, there are people that don't own cars, people rent bikes by the hour and they're not tourists, that's their mode of transportation. So it's just really this having that, you know, 30 years ago, a supercomputer in our hand, you know, be able to do those things, it's just amazing to me, but it's just the onward, more and more the trend of... Did you try it? No, not yet. So I want to interview them in person, so next time I go back, we'll actually sign up and try for a month or two, but she'll ask me, you know, she was cleaning the wires and nothing works anymore, but she'll probably turn off the power supply or the power strip or something, you know, and it's just impossible for me to troubleshoot that over the phone. But if I could pay somebody 70 bucks and it's done, you know, someone that she's come because this is a single woman in her 70s, late 70s, she doesn't just want any random person coming into her house when she's alone, so someone that she's comfortable with, someone that I can tell her I checked out, you know, and did that. Anyway, so joinpapa.com if you want to become, you know, one of the people that go ahead and do that, so it's tech support on demand, it's all those things, you know, buy the hour. Yeah, okay, so let's talk about email. So last week we talked about how I had kind of really made a stab a couple of weeks ago at having a zero inbox policy. It didn't work, right? I'm back to my old habits. That was really tough, so let's talk about that. What are some concrete things that people can do to manage their inbox? I think one of the important things to understand is why we use email. So there's a few concepts. I don't want to talk to people. Well, that could very well be one of the reasons. And we see a lot of people walking around with headsets right now, and the message we give to people when we do that is I'm doing it because I don't want to interact with you. So what's interesting when you look at email, and I think the name probably doesn't do it any service, you're thinking it's like a letter, you're going to open it up, it's like a gift. It has this nice feeling when you get it. When you understand the purpose of email, it's a form of communication that we use. And that whole term is wrapped up in an enigma called expectations. What do I expect in terms of my interaction with email? There's no face typically that we're associating with that email. So it's very easy for us to kind of fire and forget. So how do you manage all of this information? And I think that really is the way we should be looking at it as information. Well, I was kidding when I said I don't want to talk to people, obviously. But one of my biggest pet peeves with email is I will get added to an email chain. And if you ask the person, it was an FYI to you. I don't need to know that. So there's so much of the communication is not necessary. So here's the tip for that. All right, so first tip, and this is great. So as you start thinking about the things that frustrate you about email, just shoot them at me. So on FYIs, you want to paraphrase and then recommend that they read the details below. That's one simple little trick. It's very easy to say FYI. It's even easier when you're on a phone because you don't want to have to sit there and type out a whole message. Easiest tip I can give somebody is before you say FYI, don't do it. If you're going to do it to yourself, that's fine. But just paraphrase. But this shouldn't be a real conversation, by the way, right? Somebody sending you some information. You've got to pass that information on. You don't regurgitate everything word for word. You paraphrase and you hand it off. What people end up doing is they write their whole email. It's to you, say, and they add in 50 people in the CC. There's an implied meaning to that. CC typically would mean if you're interested, here's the information. It doesn't mean there's an action. If you're in the CC, it's a non-actionable email. But people assume that because I CC'd you in on that email, when you CC'd me on, of the 50 that you sent me today, which were the three that I needed to know? Actionable. Exactly. And that's the problem people have. To me, that's the biggest problem. There's just so much information in your email inbox that it's like an avalanche. But three of the three, I get maybe three really important email. I get hundreds a day of all the, wake up in the morning and there's $50 an hour ready from the stuff coming from the mainland and I get three or four critical ones that I say, wow, I'm really glad they told me that. And when you have that hierarchy of communication, and I think it's inborn in me, I'm 50 years old, right? I mean, it's when the phone rings, thank you, when the phone rings, you answer it. That is someone's hoping you're going to answer the phone, right? So I can be, if I get an email and someone asks me a question, I don't answer it. Right? Unless it's two or three words. I mean, if I've got to look something up, but if someone was to call me and they catch me on the phone and they ask me that same question, I'm going to look it up, if it's a minute, look up some contract or look up some spec or how many things do we need for this and that, you look at it right there and I'll answer the phone. But an email comes, I'm not going to immediately answer that. So there's that implied, that email is on the bottom, right? And top I think is phone calls, and for me, but for my kids, it's the text message, right? I mean, I'll call my son and he goes, he'll ask me, why didn't you text me? I said, because I'm your father, I know I pay for your phone, I don't have to text you, you better answer the phone when I call. So is that the right place? Can an email be on the bottom? Because that's the nice thing is, I can ask you a very complicated question and I'm assuming that you're going to research that immediately and get back to me when you can. But then- As a good friend told me, expectations and assuming, they often time lead to problems and agreement is really a good place to start. You've heard of the golden rule, right? Treat others the way you want to be treated and then if you heard the platinum rule, it's a little bit worn out by now, but treat others the way they want to be treated. So what's interesting is when you talk about your experience with your son is there are a lot of people out there that can communicate more effectively on their own terms. The problem is we don't know exactly how, we can't say exactly how everyone should behave or how everyone does behave because it becomes very customized at that point. But there are some customers that I deal with that would rather text and they're either in meetings all the time or they've got patients in front of them. So I have to remember that that's the way that they want to be communicated with. And with email, I mean there's the, like I've never, people don't know this, everybody knows you can mark a message urgent, but you can also mark it as like normal and urgent. There's also one below that. What? Yeah, exactly. I don't think I've ever got an email. I forget what it's called. Don't bother. No, but there's, but there is, you can go urgent, normal or there's something else. Like yeah, that doesn't matter, but there's no way to judge the critical importance of it, right? And you're looking at, oh, I got 30, 30, 30 new emails because I was at a meeting. It's hard to pick the gold out of there and say, which are the ones that I need to. And I still, we still have clients that they don't have, the boss does not have a computer on their desk. Right. Their secretaries read all their emails. The secretary prints it off. He looks at them. He does the ones that the boss wants. He marks them up, highlights the part and hands it that way. And there's a lot of wisdom in having someone do that for you, that all of the junk, all the things that need to be handled. I had a friend tell me that he interviewed someone that went to an Ivy League school and he was trying to place him for a job. And they had problems placing him for a job because he used, I believe, Airbnb as his home. And I believe he used a virtual assistant to scan all of his physical mail in and to read his email. So what you're talking about is exactly right. You're talking about, even the news topic you had about Papa.com, what if they just did everything for you and you had everything sent to them? It'd be interesting, right? They'll prioritize your work for you. They'll, I mean, that's why you have call centers going from in-state to being outsourced. It's because if I come up with a rule or a process and I shove everything through that process, it's not the best experience for the customer, but you're a lot more efficient. And that's another key part. Are you being more efficient or are you being effective? So when you get a response like you do from your son saying, why didn't you text me, for you, it's probably not nearly as effective to be able to communicate with your son that way. But for him, that's the way he wants to be communicated with. And I wish there was a way that we can all just agree on it, but it isn't going to happen. So I've got a few rules for you. So let's hold that till after the break. Yeah, but it is tough because, and we'll talk about spam. And one of the main things I did was I really went through, I looked at each email, and I would get a list I signed up for four or five years ago. And I would just ignore it, and I would just delete it. But yeah, so a lot of tips on getting your email down. So again, my name is Matt Darnell with console.cloud. We're here supporting your tech. We'll be right back after the break. Hello, I'm Dave Stevens, host of the Cyber Underground. This is where we discuss everything that relates to computers that's just going to scare you out of your mind. So come join us every week here on thinktecawaii.com, 1pm on Friday afternoons, and then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube. Just look up the Cyber Underground on YouTube. All our shows will show up. And please follow us. We're always giving you current, relevant information to protect you. Keeping you safe. Aloha. Aloha, my name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of thinktecawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea is on thinktecawaii every other Monday at 11am. Please join me, where my guests talk about law topics and ideas and music and Hawaiiana all across the sea from Hawaii and back again. Aloha. Welcome back again, Matt Darnell with console.cloud, joined by Greg Jackson with console.cloud. Before we get into your top three tips, tell me about your, I see you're supporting a new phone there. Tell me all about your phone. Where's your phone? Oh, my phone's over here, over here. Yeah, put your phone down. And what phone do you have? I have a Note 8. What do you think I have? I think you have a Note 8. Yeah, that's the problem. OK. That's a Note 9. You have a Note 9? Yeah. Oh, interesting. OK. And you know what? I don't really know it. So, and this is something that we probably should have a show on. First was, it was painful to transfer over. And it's because I'm really, I just use it. And I see commercials, you set the cable up, and it just happens. It's simple. Yeah, it's simple. Yeah. I literally had, I'm just going to say the vendor, I have Sprint and I asked them, just for fun, they said, would you like somebody to help you transition? I go, sure, that'd be great. OK, would you like to schedule it? I said, yeah, I'll schedule it. They give you some. Is this online or is this like in a stock? Yeah, online. I ordered it. They schedule it for 6.30 PM Hawaii time. OK. The guy calls me up and he says, hey, look, we're about ready to close. Let me go ahead and walk you through the process. And he says, go to the help, the chat window for Sprint. And then, are you there? Great. All right, thanks for calling. Ask him any questions you have. That was crazy. But I don't really see much of a difference. I did picture comparisons. You know, it doesn't move a little snappier if I spend a lot of time on PUBG or Fortnite. Maybe I might see a little bit. What's PUBG? No, what's Fortnite? OK. So I'm not impressed. My son desperately wants them because you get a special Fortnite skin. You can, yeah. Apparently with that. So he desperately has a note 8 as well. And I said, well, we'll see. Because I went from the note 4 to the note 8. And that was a real big jump. But the stylus is supposed to have a Bluetooth component to it so you can use it as a click the picture. It's a side dish. Yeah. OK, so there you got your phone. Note 9. And that's what the reviews were. It's a very small incremental upgrade to the note 8. Memory is three times as much. That's good. Maybe more. It's just there's still a slot for it. Yep, a card. Same spot. I mean, I'm using my old phone case. So really? Yeah, I mean, I just had to adjust a little bit. The buttons don't line up. But everything's in the same spot. I don't do it. All right. Greg Jackson. Yeah. Number one email tip that we want to give to people. All right, so I have an acronym. We're going to mop this thing up. That's the acronym, MOP. You want to minimize, organize, prioritize. And all that. You write that down. Minimize, organize, and prioritize. There's some techniques in doing that. All this is contingent on your culture. How you manage email at your house is not the way you're going to manage email at work. But to the hard part, with what you just said, is there's three cultures involved. Four cultures. Four cultures involved, right? There's my culture. There's the culture of my company. There's the person I'm talking to's culture. And the culture of their company. So me, as just firing off an email or receiving an email, it's very difficult for me to know what they expect. Yes. And there are people that mark everything. That's their culture. And in my culture, that just means it's like, if someone yells at you, the first couple of times you're going to react. But if every time they communicate with you, they're just screaming and yelling, just tune it out. So that culture is such a hard, especially when they're one or two off communications. And then you're moving on to the next project. So it can be a challenge. So as soon as you understand the culture, ideally, and we'll talk a little bit more about what minimize, organize, and prioritize means. But what you really want to try to accomplish is getting through your email. And I mentioned this last show. No one gets an award. No one gets a pat on the back. You're not going to, hey, man, you really process email. And one study I did, I had several employees. We worked on a team. We talked about where we had an app that would tell everybody where they're at. There were technicians, right? Hey, I'm at this location. I'm working on this ticket. And that gives us an idea of how long these tickets took to process. And we had another bucket called admin time. And what we found through the study, because we participated as a team, if you look at your outbox, there's an average of three minutes. This is not necessarily applies to you. It depends on the culture. But on average, we found three minutes. If you take three minutes and times it by the number of outbound emails that you sent and your sent items, that's how much time you're spending on email. Think about that for a second. Now, I would get 75 actionable emails a day. This was 10 years ago. I don't think it's getting any better. So if you're getting 100, 200 emails a day, how many of those are actionable? If you've got 75 actionable, what are you doing with those? So what are the actions that we can take to minimize email? Well, we can do some of the things that you said. We can talk on the phone. We can get in front of the person. Things not to do in your email. Don't make your emails long. And don't include too much emotion in them. I can't stress that. That's the fun in not including emotion in them. Because it's expectations. When you capitalize your letters, are you trying to yell at me? Seriously, that's all caps. Hey, you know, that works one time, but you know. When I said, how's it going? Exclamation, exclamation, exclamation. I wasn't angry at you. I was excited for you. And that whole translation can get lost. So first thing, minimize. How do you minimize it? I've got do delegate, drag, and delete. You're going to do something with it. You're going to drag it to your calendar. You're going to delete it. Or you're going to give it to somebody or someplace. A lot of things, we've got alarms through our emails. We've got to delegate that. Maybe it goes into our ticketing system. But we've got to get it off our plate. How quickly can you do it? If it's something that creates a lot of time, that moves into the organize, right? So now you want to organize your email. We want to have buckets. And we have call centers. They used to be called call centers. We're a visa or a bank or insurance company. And they used to only do phone calls. But now they do emails and chats as well. And you get statistics of just how long did a phone call take to get an answer? How long were they on the call? From the time when you send an email, it just goes in line like if you would have called at that moment. So if it were taking you 10 minutes on hold on the phone, 10 minutes after you send that email pops up on an agent's computer and it tracks how long we have the email open. And I imagine, are there plugins for Outlook? Good question, I don't know. I would think that would be something that would be good to know, good to track. How long do I? Sometimes I have email just sitting there and I never get to it because I know that one's going to take time. Well, and that's true. And I keep it open. I've never drug an email to the calendar. I don't even know how you would do that. You literally click and drag it and it just opens up a calendar invite and I just set a date. You can do the tasks too. The calendar events at the bottom. We are talking about Microsoft Outlook. Outlook, yes. Why would we talk about anything else? Is there anything else? But okay, so, and then and I, and it's okay, so, all right. So delegate, do it, or give it to somebody, drag it to the calendar. The calendar schedule, or just delete it. And the hard part with delegating is, I tell my subordinates all the time that, you know, when I ask you to do something, I don't want you to be the kind of person that I've got to think about it, you know? But then, if you open any leadership book, telling somebody to do something is 3% of it getting done, you know? And so that's the hard part. That's my fear, that something important I want someone to do, it would be nice. Again, this is where we need the computer to help us. If I shoot an email, I say, Lisa, take care of this, okay? And I never get a reply back, or there's never an email back with that, in that context, not exact, but in that context. Outlook should tell me, hey, did, I don't know if Lisa, if she, you never heard back from Lisa on this. Now maybe I just dismiss it because she talked to me about it or that, but yeah, I wish there was more technology help with that. See, you like communicating. What you're discussing is a feedback loop. Texting, no feedback loop. Email, no feedback loop. I hear you, that's a big problem. I mean, let me ask you this question, because one of the things you can do, I can ask for a delivered receipt and a red receipt. Yeah, I can ignore those. Do you send the red receipt back? I don't, if you're asking me to do more clicks, I'm sighing. Well, you can have it automatically. I have Outlook program not to ignore them. So it doesn't, it won't send a red receipt. But anyway, okay, so that's my hard part with the delegation part is, how do you track it? And I think that goes with any part of the business, but if I'm scared, oh, Lisa do this one, Pat's gonna do this one, Marc's gonna do this one, it's at the end of the day, it's like, man, how do I keep track of everything I asked everybody to do? It's easier to do it myself. There's so many things where I say, then I know it's done, I don't have to think about it. You have clinically defined a small business owner, Matt. Okay. And that's why we're having this show. All right. Delegation's hard. Well, clinically I am a small business owner. Technically, actually. You are, and that's great, because you're speaking for all the people that are probably watching our show. So, yes, did it? Both of them. Yes. You and me. You and I are. Yes, both. Delegation is really, really important. If you get nervous about what's happening with it, one thing that I do is I blind-carbon copy myself, it comes in my e-mail, and I click and drag it as a reminder to follow up. So, sometimes I gotta delegate, delegate slash defer, I mean, I delegate, I don't have anybody that answers to me, but I might defer it, right? Part of organization is, but let's stay on M for another second, because I think that the M, with the minimize, I have the spam filter you can set at different levels. And one thing that I'm very afraid of, I would rather get a hundred spam messages than have what's called, we call it false positive, meaning it's a real e-mail, but they mentioned something that's not allowed, and then it goes to spam, but it's a real e-mail. So, I have my spam filter set very low, meaning let most things come through, and I still, about every month or so, I go through my spam, and then I look for that. That, again, I wanna return people's communications. And with that, I unsubscribe, I block people, and do those. So, I think the minimize is just, look at the e-mail as you're getting, and the people that constantly, you wanna buy a list of businesses with this, or how's your credit, or how do you wanna do this, or those kind of things. And I usually just block the sender and block the domain. I don't click the unsubscribe link, because that can lead to a bunch of other horrible things. Okay, so in our mop, we got to M here. So, next week, next show, we'll talk about O, and then maybe we'll even get to P, who knows. So, again, my name is Matt Darnell, with Supporting Your Tech. Thank you, Greg, as always. You're welcome. Very good advice. So, hopefully you got something good out of that. If you have any questions, we monitor the video, so definitely put those down in the comments. Allah have a great day.