If you’ve ever struggled with wanting to have good response times in your inbox but at the same time, have that feeling that your emails are constantly running your life? You’re checking and refreshing every 5 minutes and losing your focus, and you fall asleep at night feeling like you got nothing other than emails done for the day. Well my friend this episode is for you!! 

We talk about how to maintain quality and reliable client communication while also establishing healthy boundaries for yourself so you can actually accomplish the rest of your work (not to mention finding time to rest.)  We walk you through strategic tips and ways to create balance and even give you a sample workday timeline to show you how you can implement the strategies we’re talking about.

If you’re needing some help and insight on how to balance all the responsibilities and how to keep your inbox from ruling your days and running your life, ya better not go anywhere. 

This episode is for YOU if you’re the kind of person who struggles with trying to give a really good client communication experience in your business and respond back to inquiries and social media DMs quickly. And yet you kinda sorta want to live your life without it constantly being interrupted every 2 seconds by your phone. Can we get an amen!?

This is a very real problem a LOT of small business owners, especially solopreneurs struggle with.

 

Use time blocking to create intentional times when you do check emails

This means strategically looking at your calendar and blocking out X amount of time to do XYZ. This is looking at your time and being intentional with what you’re doing and when instead of going through the motions. That can be as much or as little per day as you want. It could be every 2 hours, twice a day, or even once a day. You call the shots!

 

Know your own personal boundaries.

Boundaries are built to ultimately GIVE you freedom. This will be different for everyone. For us, we have clear work hours. We don’t check email outside of those. 

If you’re not sure how to ignore your notification from your inbox, well friend there is a thing called turning off your notifications for email. Only check during your time blocks for emails.

If you don’t set boundaries, and you ARE the kind of person who responds back to a dm or email the second it comes in, YOU need to establish boundaries.

 

Hire a VA to help 

Obviously, not everyone can do this straight out of the gate, but hiring help is a GREAT way to sort of have your cake and eat it too when it comes to this. 

If you’re comfortable with it, you can hire someone to respond to social media DMS for you when you’re trying to get deep work done. Have a VA respond to your initial inquiry with a very thorough template that does NOT sound like a template. Have them tweak it to respond to that specific inquirer’s questions or comments so it doesn’t sound template-y. Then take over the conversation once that inquiry responds back ready to book. That way you’re not constantly in your inbox responding to every email, especially if it’s people that weren’t going to book anyway.

 

There are seasons with inquiry response times!!

When you’re trying to book anything and everything you can, your response times will ideally be faster. We used to have a rule/window of within an hour or two response times. There are only select seasons of that time and it is not sustainable. You’ll also have seasons where you don’t need to have that urgency in responses. We now try to respond within 24 hours. 

 

Example timeline of a day with structured workflow/utilizing time blocking:

7:00 am – wakeup, coffee, and/or breakfast

7:30 am – morning workout, reading, etc

8:30 am – get ready for the day

9:00 am – begin work (here you can check email first thing if you’re in a season of needing to respond to things ASAP – OR you can tackle a couple of hours of deep work tasks (editing, creating, batching IG content, etc) and check the emails around 11 am)

11:00 am – shallow work (post to Instagram, check emails, etc)

12:00 pm – lunch break

1:00 pm – check emails

1:30 pm – dive into more deep work

3:00 pm – check inbox, finish any shallow tasks for the day

4:00 pm – finish work

 

Things to notice about the timeline:

You have a morning routine WITHOUT checking your phone. That example is obviously not applicable to everyone (especially parents) but it shows how you can have an intentional morning of caring for yourself and not checking your phone or inbox first thing in the morning

Notice: you’re batching shallow tasks with deep work tasks and you’re time blocking to create space for each of those things so you can fully focus.

You can obviously set your own work hours, maybe you start earlier or work later. We’re just trying to show a generic example of how you can still work on your emails multiple times throughout a day and yet have spaces where you DO NOT work in your inbox.

 

 

Show notes

The Heart Conference: www.theheartuniversity.com/conference

 

Connect with others before the conference to plan lodging, transportation and create relationships before in our Facebook group: ​​https://www.facebook.com/groups/170106201881803/

 

The Posing Minor: www.theheartuniversity.com/posing-minor

 

Episode 078

Epsiode 133

 

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