Yes that’s right I found £5000 worth of business in my junk mail box!
Let me explain.
I am in the fortunate position that I’m in demand, for which I am thankful.
But maybe sometimes I get too in demand and busy. Stupid busy…..eg im so busy I do stupid things and make mistakes!
There are so many channels which people now contact us and send messages on:
- Facebook, comments and messages
- My blogs
- Text’s
- Phonecalls – mobile and landline
- Emails (and junk emails)
- Face-to-face
It would sometimes feel like I was drowning in messages (most of which, it seems were not even forme.), overwhelmed.com…….
Overwhelm is a term sometimes used to describe what I feel like when this happens and your brain is on information overload. (this information overload causes loads of “turbulence” in your mind and leads to you becoming less productive.)
I’m partly to blame myself for making the situation worse, subscribing to anyone and everyone’s lists doesn’t help the tranquillity of my inbox.
That’s why I started to switch off a bit to some of the incoming channels. Just one or two, it couldn’t d any harm could it? – I started to leave or delete my junk mail and was not checking facey half as much.
Too busy to check my junk mail! Yes.
Sometimes I would see that there were 200+ messages in my junk mail and I would just press ctrl + A and hit the delete button.
Honestly I can’t believe how stupid I may have been.
One day, last year, I was forced to check my junk mail because someone’s regular message had been marked as junk, automatically by my anti-virus software.
I have two anti-virus software programmes installed. You gotta be safe right?
While I was rummaging around looking for the missing email I saw a personal training enquiry from my website. Happy days!
I subsequently signed up the guy and he stayed for 2 “terms” of 3 months and has now moved onto my maintenance programme, all this will bring an income of around £5k in before the year is out.
Do I check my junk mail these days? Hell yes.
Do you check you junk mail or are you too busy like I was?
What do I do if I see any signs of overwhelm on the horizon?
Take a break from work, exercise (running down the woods or beach(bare foot) work well for me), practice mediation and silence and STAY OFF the laptop for 48-72 hrs!
Leave a comment below and share your experiences of information overload or overwhelm, which lead to you missing something important.
Take care,
Richard
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Hey Richard,
Interesting stuff. With all that email trouble sounds like you could really benefit from the product I work on, called AwayFind. It let’s you prioritize the important people and emails and sends them directly to your phone. Our customers have really enjoyed increased productivity knowing they won’t miss something important, but can stay out of their inbox. Trial is free, curious to know your thoughts if it’s helpful for the training community. Awayfind.com, check it out!
Kristen