Edmonton Business Consultant | Text & Email are Time Wasters

Remember the statistic that we have here is, you know, we send them a text so we get focused on something else and then they respond back by another text. And guess what? Now it’s 23 minutes before we reach our Max maximum level of capacity. Go back on that, ask that we tend to do a first. So, Edmonton Business Consultant, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s not very efficient at all.

Yeah, I can see why with the two, I can be you ever. I want to be because it’s not,

hi, thanks for joining us for another episode of ask [inaudible] CPA. Today is Edmond business coach. We’re talking about how texts and email are time wasters. Again, as the MD business coach, we’re talking about how texts and email are time wasters. So Michael, have you ever gotten involved in a text message exchange and it took way longer than what you thought was necessary? Yeah, just wait like clients. Clients. Yeah. I mean even sometimes I find you, you’re just texting back and forth someone and you’re just trying to work out where are you going for dinner and it’s, you know, 30 messages deep. At some point it’s just, yeah, it tends to go back and forth. And the quote that we have here, it’s a Gary Keller cool author of the one thing it says, tackling these tasks in the order received them is like behaving as if the squeaky wheel immediately deserves the grease.

But as Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke Duly noted, the things which are most important don’t always scream the loudest. And the statistic that we have here is it takes an average of 23 minutes to reach your peak level of intellectual capacity. Once you’re interrupted from one of these text messages or emails, that’s going to take 23 minutes to be as smart as you should be yet. And the story that we have here is know the cultural norms that we’d developed around cell phones, text messaging and emails. You know, it’s fooling business orders and you’re thinking that back and forth, text based communication is actually efficient. And so Michael, what are the questions you think these business owners should be asking? How do most accountants bill most accountants bill by the hour? You know what? You get a time in, they’re tracking their task. And most accountants are billing on 15 minute intervals or a lot of times they’ll bill on six minutes due to rules in a one 10th of an hour.

Um, and then they’re just going to tack on an hourly rate. They’re going to time that number by an hourly rate and send your bill every month or every year or however they do it. But most accountants are straight by the hour and they’re tracking time in 15 minutes and criminals, how long did you track your time? In increments of 15 minutes. I’m regrettably can admit that I track my time in increments of 15 minutes for 10 years of my life, a decade in my life. I spent 10 years of my life tracking my time in 15 minute intervals. Edmonton Business Consultant, it is a exercise that I’m not that proud of today, but it actually happened. So I have 10 years of experience, a decade of experience with tracking my time in 15 minute intervals. How efficient is text than email to have a back and forth discussion. Um, so in that time of tracking your time back and forth, you start looking at what was working, what’s not working, and you start looking at some of the conversations that you have either by text message or email, and you end up with these text messages or email threads, you know, I talked about earlier, but just trying to book a dinner time with someone or appointment time with someone back and forth by texts or email and how long that can take them necessarily.

Imagine if you’re dealing with a more complex business issue or a customer service issue. And then trying to go back and forth by text and email over and over and over again just to reach a, Edmonton Business Consultant, just to reach a desired result. And for, remember the statistic that we have here is, you know, we send them a text so we get focused on something else and then they respond back by another text. And guess what? Now it’s 23 minutes before we reach our Max maximum level of capacity. We’re back on that task that we tend to do. Um, first. So, Edmonton Business Consultant, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s not very efficient at all. Are you likely to get someone’s full attention by texts or email? Yeah. So that’s the other thing. You know, you’re putting all your effort or time into this text and email and trying to word it the exact right way.

And then what’s happening on the other side is someone’s looking at it while they’re driving. They read like three words of the, of the, you know, a 500 word dissertation that you read for them and you get a unintelligent response back. Edmonton Business Consultant, because that’s just what happens when you send something by text or email. It’s a hit or miss. If you’re going to get someone’s full attention on the other end, what do you recommend if you have to have a back and forth discussion? Edmonton Business Consultant, my, my recommendation is if, you know, you’re going to get involved in a back and forth discussion. So [inaudible] you’re just about to send a text, you’re just about to send an email and you’re going to type out that email and you have to ask yourself, is this communication going to be used to close the communication loop or is there an inevitable response that’s coming back?

And if there’s an inevitable response coming back, I, you know, what, you know, we do hear and what I’ve always done is I’m just going to pick up the phone and I’m going to call that person or I’m going to send them meeting times, Edmonton Business Consultant, and book, you know, a time to, to discuss back and forth with them. So my recommendation is you have to have a back and forth discussion with someone is you’re either going to call them or book a meeting, whether it’s a phone meeting or an in person meeting to have that back and forth discussion cause it’ll just happen more efficiently. Are you more likely to influence someone in person or on the phone than by text? So the other, yeah. So if want to influence someone, let’s say that you even have their full attention, you can guarantee you that they have their full attention when you can.

But even if you could guarantee that that person your full attention, if you have to influence them in any way, shape or form. So if you’re someone tried to sell them something or even if you’re one of their, you know, service providers, you know, um, and you know, you’re trying to convince them that why this is a better idea or explain to them how this works, you’re going to have greater power influenced by phone or by, Edmonton Business Consultant, by phone or in person meeting. And there was a, uh, a sociological experiment, you know, years and years ago, I think they call it the Milgram experiment where they had, you know, a, a, a physician and he was trying to convince people to administer electric shocks and they monitored, you know, how effective he was on getting him to deliver these effective, these electric shocks to people, whether he’s in another room or on the phone or sitting right beside them.

And the closer in proximity that the physician got to the person who was giving instructions through, the more likely that person was to comply. So if you can have a phone discussion or an in person discussion in place of the back and forth email exchange, you’re going to have more success in trying to influence that other person is written texts and better tool to confirm what was discussed. Yeah, so written text is a very powerful tool. Uh, it’s inefficient to engage in discussion, but it is an extremely efficient and useful to confirm what was or what was said. Because a lot of times what was said can get misconstrued over time or it can change over time. But once you’ve reached that decision, that consensus, if you will, you know, written text is extremely powerful to confirm it, to set it and stole from this day for this is what we did on this issue. This is what we discussed on this issue. A written Texas phenomenal for that.

Should you be working out of your inbox or from his schedule? Yeah, so you should always be working from his schedule. So texts and email, it can just be this mindless, senseless dripping. You can end up, you know, communicating back and forth on issues that really aren’t the most important issues. I mean, my friends, they don’t matter. Your organization isn’t going to succeed or fail based on the outcome of this issue, but they’re the person who emails you back first. So you respond back to that first. Um, that shouldn’t be how you’re allocating your time. You should be allocating your time planned out on a schedule, which is based on, you know, all the initiatives that are going to move your organization forward quicker. Should we prioritize in your schedule. Edmonton Business Consultant, and you should not be working from your inbox. That should not guide your day.

You should not get up in the day and look at your inbox and start working from your inbox. You should have the schedule laid out and checking your inbox, you know, um, you know, should just be one time on your schedule. Is it okay to respond to an email with a phone call or meeting times to discuss? Yeah. So a lot of that’s the move. You’re going to get the email, you’re gonna get that text message and you know that as soon as you see this thing and you’re like, this thing is going to take forever, we’re going to go back and forth on this thing. There’s no way I can write one email and close this communication loop. So it’s just, you know, you don’t have to respond by that same medium that they gave it to you. Um, you know, cause they might’ve just responded in the middle of night with their queries.

Or even if the person you’re dealing with doesn’t understand the value of discussion, it doesn’t mean they have to hijack your time based on that. So if they send you an email that’s an inevitable discussion, pick the phone, try to have a discussion with them, try to book a meeting with them. Uh, even you can send them meeting times and going to come to booking meeting times by email. Edmonton Business Consultant, your old says, send them one, send them to your next 10, 10 available meeting times. You’d be surprised how many people will pick one. And you won’t go back and forth about meeting times a, again. You can use that, that meeting time discussion to close that communication loop. They’ll realize that it’s, it’s a, it’s a discussion issue once you can afford it. How should you delegate email or texts? Yeah, so we, we know now that, you know, it takes 23 minutes to reach your peak level of intellectual performance once you’ve been interrupted by a text message or email.

So if you want to be a company that’s at the top of your game, um, inevitably as you get bigger, you’re going to get more text messages, you’re going to get more emails. Uh, if you want to be operating at a perpetual level of stupidity, uh, you can keep trying to, you know, uh, check up yourself. But the problem with that is your competitors might not be, your competitors might be operating at 100%, their intellectual capacity and you might be perfecting their product or service, you know, in their cave or in their office uninterrupted and getting better and better every single day. So you should delegate that. You should delegate that email. And one of the steps that it generally takes is you, and this will be controversial, and you’re going to see so many small businesses that do this wrong. You’re going to create one email for the company.

You’re going to create an info@company.com and everyone who gets emails is going to get emailed through that one box. And you look at that and said, that’s not how we do it in my business. That’s how we, we don’t do it in that business. But then I encourage you, look at companies bigger than you look at, you know, apple. Let’s say you want to email the guys at Dropbox or apple. Do you get an email for the particular technician at apple or do you get a generic email generic? They give you a generic email because they figured this out already. They figured out that you can’t have all of your employees, or even worse, the business owner getting interrupted all the time by emails back and forth. So you have to find people who are going to, you know, you’re going to say, hey, these are the people that aren’t going to, uh, basically sacrifice as they’re going to be distracted.

That’s their job to get distracted and respond back as, as efficiently as possible. And I’m going to insulate not just the owner, but we’re going to insulate other too, so they’re not perpetually distracted by text or emails. So as soon as you can afford it, you need that assistant. Basically, you start off with, you know, getting a, a generic email and then you get that assistant and then you reply through that assistant. You have a time to meet with that assistant, go through the emails, engage out, this is how we’re going to respond. And sometimes they might have to do a draft response and you know, pass that draft response through you that’s going to increase some of the time between the text message or email. And that’s fine. And sometimes the assistant’s going to bring something to you and you’re gonna look at that email and say, hey, you can’t address that without a back and forth discussion.

So let’s book a meeting with this person. Edmonton Business Consultant, that’s, that’s how you have to do it. I mean, that’s the only recipe for scalability. And like I said, just look at any big company and they all have those generic emails set up and that’s how they scale and that’s how they win. So I think that’s what we have here today. Thanks so much for, uh, for watching. And as always, please at the likened subscribe button. So we continue to deliver your tips on how to beat the odds at business. And as always, please, there’s some comments so we can address your queries and, uh, use your input for future videos. Thanks very much.