How often do you check email?

Today I was told about a research study conducted not too long ago that suggests that optimally, you should check and process your email inbox 2-4 times a day. That means NOT having the fool thing running full time with that pop-up in Outlook letting you know every time you receive an email message. The allows you to focus on your work at hand and minimizes interruptions. Even across different work environments and different types of workers, this rule held true. So how often do YOU process your email?

What is your Game Plan for 2007?

What visions, goals, and actions will you take in 2007 to have a future different from the past?

We hope you’ve had a successful, profitable and happy 2006! We also hope you had a vision, goals, took actions, and got results.

If you worked on these three areas, it’s likely that you got more of what you wanted, be it money, fun, etc.. You got results and moved forward!

If, on the other hand, you weren’t as happy with your progress, there’s good new – you get to start again!  But this time, you can do it better.

If, by chance, you did not get as far as you had hoped last year, or you did get what you wanted, but want to it again – but better, then read on. We are going to talk about vision, goals, and getting into action for results. 

Vision - Did you know that Successful People Have A Vision? To be successful you have got to have a dream, a vision, a burning passion. You have got to want something, and you have got to want it bad. This dream, goal, obsession has to become your prime motivator. It takes enthusiasm, commitment, a willingness to work hard, a willingness to go the extra mile, a willingness to do whatever has to be done in order to get the job done. To get the things you want in life you need motivation, drive, and energy. What is YOUR vision?

Goals – Everyone knows written & reviewed goals are important and almost nobody writes them down. And yes, almost everyone is guilty of not fully making the grade on goals – even I’m guilty at times. But you can make sure you’re not one of those people that get “left behind”.  Start with Today and figure out where you want to be tomorrow and set your road map for how to get there.  Create your Master Plan of Action to get you there.

Action - If you want a future different from the past repeated, you need to consider taking a different approach to your destination. If you don’t change your approach, at best, you’re bound to repeat the past.

So, what does all this mean?  To boil it down to a few words – “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there. And Move Forward towards your goal!” If you do these things, you will get RESULTS!

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.
- Mark Twain

This is what Better U Coaching is all about – helping people Move Forward towards their goal. Helping YOU BE BETTER.

Call us today at (215) 822-5125 to find out how you can have a BETTER 2007.

We hope everyone has a GREAT 2007!

Use Gmail as your SPAM filter

Thought I would share with you a little trick I use to greatly reduce the amount of SPAM I get in my inbox. My domain is hosted by a third party and it allows me to create aliases that forward to other email addresses rather than being dumped into my inbox. So I have all of that mail sent to Gmail, where I specify which senders I want and which mail is SPAM. From there, I have Gmail forward all of the good mail to my real inbox, which is hosted by Mail2Web Hosted Exchange service. This way, I go into Gmail about once every week or two and flag SPAM that got through as SPAM and if there is anything that got caught in SPAM filters that I want I mark as not being SPAM. Its like a constantly learning SPAM filter.

But to make it even better, I only use my Gmail address for any web forms I fill out anymore, so I can immediately filter out the stuff I don’t really want.

So here’s how it breaks down:

name1@mydomain.com –> me@gmail.com –> realname@mydomain.com.

I like this solution because I don’t have to mess with Outlook’s junk mail folders, white lists, etc. and I can easily go back and retrieve something that I accidentally deleted as well. I can do this because while Gmail forwards the email to my real email address, it keeps a copy IN Gmail as well. I delete the misc. stuff and keep the important stuff in Gmail too. I clean out Gmail every so often as well. Works for me… Enjoy.