The Type A+ Podcast Episode 9: (VIDEO!) Own Your Inbox with Special Guest, Amanda Jefferson of The GoodEnoughish Podcast! - Links & Show Notes
Episode Description:
This week, you're in for a special treat as Beth welcomes a longtime friend and fellow Type A+ person, Amanda Jefferson, to show you exactly how to get out from under that overwhelmed inbox. It's a tip that has changed Beth's approach to e-mail, and we think it'll change yours too.
Links mentioned in the episode:
Follow Amanda on socials!
Listen to Good Enough Ish!
Amanda's company, Indigo Organizing
Lindsay Satterfield, Productivity Coach
Podcast:
The Type A Plus Podcast Instagram
Host:
Beth Lawrence & Company Instagram
Beth will be back each week, delivering bite-sized tips (15 minute episodes or less) on how to optimize your life and work.
Episode Transcript can be found below:
Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Type A+ podcast. I am thrilled today to introduce you all to a card-carrying member of the type a plus community. Amanda Jefferson. Amanda and I met very early on in my entrepreneurial journey at a Wellstruck event in Philadelphia, and I have been amazed by her intelligence, her poise, and her elegant sense of style ever.
Fast forward to 2020, and we paired together for the first official, well-struck mastermind. Since then we have watched one another's businesses, grow, pivot, and change and learn from each other as well. Today she is a cohost of the good enough Phish podcast and she is here today because she has an incredible trick for email inbox management that absolutely changed my life. And I hope it can change yours too. So welcome, Amanda.
Thank you, Beth. It's so good to be here. And I love that you said I have an elegant style that oh yeah. Nice.
You always have looked so like put together. Remember when you came into the good stroke room, you just had such a sense of like confidence and you always look very, yeah elegant. Like I think the French woman style is what I would say.
Oh, my gosh. I love that. I just finished watching the Queen's Gambit on Netflix. I don't know if you've seen that and I'm obsessed with this. I wanna start dressing in the sixties. You,
You totally could. I absolutely love Queens Gambit. It is such a good show and Ugh, I, Annie Taylor joy is just so brilliant in it. You just can't take your eyes up. Cause I remember when it first came out, I thought, "all right. A show about chess. I don't really know," but they made it very, very interesting and riveting.
I know I just finished it. I don't know what to do with my life now.
Well, thank you so much for joining us today. And so tell us a little bit more, I know I touched a little bit on your podcast. But tell us more about yourself, your company, what you do, and also your new podcast.
Yes. So the podcast, I can start there because it's also, I'm a co-host with another well Strucker in the well-struck community Brook Forry and it's called the good enough ish podcast. And, um, we're about 20 episodes in, and we're having so much fun. It's just really all about how to be, what we call like good enough fish and everything, work, and life, you know, we're juggling careers and families and all kinds. Stuff. So, really very similar to your podcast. We're just looking to offer people, tips and stories and anecdotes and banter just to make life a little bit more joyful, a little bit easier.
So you can listen on apple podcasts, Spotify, et cetera. And then yeah, the, what I do in my other free time when I'm not working on the podcast. So I am a con Murray consultant, which means I was certified by Marie condo and I help people one on one in their homes, declutter organize and simplify. I'm also a Kon Mari instructor. So I'm like an old head now. And I do all the training for all the incoming trainees, most of the training for them. And then, I have an online course called organized every day and I do a lot of speaking. And my speaking is usually about how to quit the shoulds and live more joyfully.
So that's a lot about me and I live in west Chester, Pennsylvania, which I love. My daughter, Isabelle, my husband, Fernando, and we have a lot of pets everywhere. It's a good farm around here.
I love that. And I mean, I can't say enough great things about the good enough fish podcast. You know, I've been a fan since you guys started and, you know, The listeners don't know, but Amanda helped me actually be able to have the confidence and the knowledge to do this podcast.
So, Amanda, I'm so glad that you're here today and I really love your podcast as well because like mine, but also a little bit different. I feel like for me typing a plus also means struggling with perfectionism.
Yeah.
And I love that your podcast is not the antidote to perfectionism, but it's that little breath of fresh air. It's that little break that you can give yourself. And I absolutely love it. And I think it's a great supplement to this podcast.
Yeah. I love hearing from our listeners when they're always like me too. Me too. They're like shouting into the radio. Me too. Me too. It's just fun to talk about things that people can really relate to and not feel like they're alone in dealing with.
Yeah, absolutely. So let's talk about your email trick. So far, you know, for little background for our listeners during a well-struck mastermind, I think it was last year, Amanda mentioned this trick for sorting her emails, and all of us were just inundated with inboxes. We were all talking about the fact that we couldn't get out of our inboxes and actually work on our business.
And this trick has not only helped me. But it has helped. I have used it to help clients. I've used it to help just fellow entrepreneurs and people that I know in business. So what made you wanna find a solution for sorting and responding to your emails?
Mostly because I was just overwhelmed and inundated with it too.
Like, what is that quote, necessity as the mother of invention or something like that? I just felt always buried in my inbox and so did most of us. Use Gmail, but even if you don't use Gmail, a lot of the tips that I'll share can be used in that system as well.
But I just was like, I love software and I love systems and I love figuring out how to make them work for me. So I'm like, there's a must be a better way. So, I think the trick is really just understanding some of the key features that Gmail has and then using them to your advantage.
Ugh. So I love that optimizing system and making things more efficient, which is one of my favorite words.
So let's outline the methodology behind it. So I would love to, if you could share your screen, we can maybe include a little video for the listeners, and teach us your magic. Okay. That sounds good. And what I might do is actually do a split screen so that people can see my kind of notes as well.
Okay. So can you see kind of a split screen here? My notes and the Gmail? I can. I love it. Okay, perfect. So, oh, I'll, I'll focus over here a little bit. So the first thing that I like to do is check the number and then make it fun. Set a goal, set a timer. Like what is it that we're dealing with?
I lately have been much better about being on top of my email. So right now I only have 25, so that's not bad, but if you have 2000 fine. Write down 2000, and then ask yourself, okay, can I spend 25 minutes on this? Or could I try to see how many I can get through by the time the laundry is done or whatever it is?
Right. So set a goal, set a timer. Could I do four songs? How many emails could I get through in four songs? Because the trick is we don't wanna start going one by one by one by one and answering or dealing with; we're gonna do a really quick sort first. So we wanna sort before you answer. Okay. And we're gonna talk in a minute about what it means to sort and how you use labels and things like that.
I think I should, sorry. I think we should pause there because I think the instinct is. If it's unread in my inbox, I need to answer it immediately, right? Yes. And I think that this is the key. The sorting before you answer is so key because you don't even have to spend time thinking about what the email is actually about.
You just have to categorize it. Correct, because right now say this number did say 250. I would feel like, oh my gosh, one by one by one getting through 250. But when you do the sort that 250, and I'm gonna show you how I organize my inbox becomes, oh, actually I only have seven emails that I need to respond to.
And then all of a sudden your brain can process that. And it's so much easier to do. Absolutely. So, has that been, what's been really like helpful for you, Beth, the sorting before the answering?
Yes. Especially if, um, you're having a conversation back and forth and not necessarily that there's the emotion behind it, but that you have to prepare an answer for it.
And so many times the instinct in the past for me was, oh, an urgent email came in. That means I have to answer it. And I had to keep telling myself, literally I tell myself email doesn't mean emergency mail. Like you could take a second. You could take a second to pause and just, that act of sorting again, it's almost like that deep breath and allowing yourself, giving yourself a break.
Yes. Absolutely. So yeah, the sort, before you answer, I also have here take the time to unsubscribe ruthlessly. So for example, this thing right here, I do not want this. This is like a political email. So there are a couple of different ways I can just click this little check box here. I'm just gonna move my zoom banner.
And there are a couple of different options. You can either say report spam. If it's truly spam that I have gotten that I never signed up or in this case, I think this is the case. I'm gonna click report spam. And then that will tell Gmail, don't send me that anymore, but that is spam if it comes okay.
So I wanna explain. Labels are basically just folders. So these are all of the folders that I have in my email, and it's probably too many, but, these are basically things that I say, okay, I just wanna file these away. Right. And I use this "@" symbol at the beginning of the folders that I want to rise to the top and these change.
So like for example, "@" tiny habits were something that I wanted to have at the top, but I don't necessarily anymore, so I can edit it. I can remove that, and then it's gonna send it down to the bottom. Right. So these are kind of the ones that are the most important to me. Right. So I always recommend having a sort of reply slash do something folder, which is what you can see here.
So that's saying to me, those are the things, those are the, you know, maybe you started with 250, but those are the seven things that you end up with that actually need something to happen with them. And I also really like having an online orders folder. I think it's just so great too, you know, I'd be able to pop, you know, things, as they come in because you are a lot of times wanting to track it or look for the confirmation code or something, didn't show up.
Right. So the whole idea of folders and this idea of having reply. I just wanna make sure that I give credit. I learned this from an awesome productivity coach, um, named Lindsay Satterfield, and she's based in DC we can link to her, website and she has an awesome course called workflow mastery.
She is the mastermind behind this idea of having a folder that's called reply or respond is what she calls in her case.
Love that. Thank you so much. And we'll definitely link in the show.
Perfect. So, I also use filters. Label things automatically. So you can see like this Amazon email, for example, has the online orders filter already assigned to it.
So every time I get an email from Amazon, it's gonna put it in my online orders folder, or in the case of this email, this is a newsletter that I get and it's from this person and I like them to be grouped together and it's about my daughter. So I can actually assign two labels for that. So you can go up to settings or actually, let me show you an easier way. So say, for example, this email, I wanted to be automatically filtered. Every time. I would go in and I would click on filter messages like these, and then it's automatically gonna pop in from this person. And I could click. You can already see it's identified, it's found all of these, so I can say, create a filter, and then you can tell it all kinds of stuff.
Skip the inbox and mark it as red. Give it a star, but I usually just use choose a label so I could create a new label. Say I wanted to create a label for everything that I get from Martha Beck. So I'm gonna create that. And I can also click here. Also, apply filter 20 matching conversations, and it's automatically going to create a new folder for Martha Beck, and every time I get an email from Martha Beck, I'm, it's gonna be labeled as such. So I love using filters because it just gets the system working for you and automatically doing things.
Absolutely. You just saved yourself so much time.
Right, right. Because a lot of times I am looking like, say I love Martha Beck's newsletters, but I haven't had a chance to catch up on them. I can archive them as I go, which I'll teach you how to do, but then I can go back and click through them and find them. You can also color code. As you can see like Isabelle has a pretty color. Online orders have a pretty color. So you can do that by going to actually, how do I do the colors label color at the top and create a color for that, which is fun.
There you go. We love, we love color coding on this podcast. We already talked about that in one of our episodes so this is another way for you to add a glance categorize and be able to find things very quickly.
Yes, absolutely. So there are sort of two options in Gmail. There's a delete, which is like, I never wanna see this email again, or archive, which I really think of more as filing. So this Amazon email already has the online orders. To it. So I know that if I file it, archive it, I'm gonna look over on online orders and it's going to be there. Right? So those are all of my online orders.
You can even get fancier and like put a star next to the ones that you're still waiting on or something like that. If you wanna get fancier.
The archive blew my mind as well because if you recall, I thought that that deleted it forever. So that completely blew my mind.
Yeah. So essentially with the sorting, you just wanna go through and say, okay, so I do a lot of like bulk, so this it's like, okay, I don't need to read that. I don't need to read that. I don't need to read that. So like, I'm not gonna unsubscribe from this because I do in theory like to get emails from them, but I don't necessarily wanna read this one. I don't need that. I don't need that. I already read that and so I'll just click here in these CA in this case, I would probably.
Like this one I might wanna archive. So the rest of these, I wanna delete this guy. I wanna an archive. So I'm just kind of going through them one by one. Now this one is suspicious because I don't remember actually ordering anything from the swim outlet. So I'm gonna click on that and I'm gonna give it the label of reply, do something.
If you want a reply, always to be at the top, you could give it two ads. And then it's gonna go ahead and go to the top. Right? So you just learned something didn't you Beth? Yeah.
I'm writing that down.
or you could do numbers, you could do like a 1, 2, 3, or something like that.
So, yeah, that's what I'm gonna do. I'm just gonna go through and so like this, I'm gonna delete this. I'm gonna put online orders and that's what you do. I really like this view of important and unread, all the replies, do something once.
and everything else so that I can, when I get done, sort of say, okay, so when you get done, this should be empty, important, and unread, and most EV you should only have stuff here. Now, what important is, is these little flags. So this is my way of telling G um, Gmail that this is something really important, right?
So if every time I get something from this person, I put it up there. Now it didn't go up there because it's not unread. But if I marked it as unread, then it would pop its way up there. So let me just refresh and you can see it up there. Right? You can also use starred if, for some reason, you have like concert tickets for this Friday and you want them to be able to show up really easily.
I have done that. Mm-hmm
you've done that, right? Like, or ones that like. Say somebody sent you a really detailed email that you already replied to, but you just need to start it because you're still working things through the things that they talked about. So let me show you how to set up your inbox.
So you go to the little cog and then see all settings, and then you're gonna go to inbox so you can see that there are a few different options inbox. Important first unread, first starred first I use priority inbox and that gives you four choices for what you want. So, this is where I can say, okay, I want important unread. I want you to show up to this number so you can kind of customize it. But I think the key is if you do wanna use, starred make sure that that's an option. And if you do wanna use this all reply, you can do that by selecting that as an option as well. So I really like that setup. It just works for my brain.
No, it's perfect. I absolutely think that this really changes, again, it changes the way you even look at your inbox or approach your inbox, cuz almost everything else now, not that it doesn't matter, but if you've done all of your work to do the filters and the important and the stars, you should have everything where you need it to be.
And that should be something you should just be able to sort later.
Yes. Yes, absolutely. And, if I'm really overwhelmed in my inbox, it's kind of like, okay, everything down there I'll deal with that later in the week or something like that.
The other thing that I really like is installing this little extension that's called Boomerang. The nice thing about boomerangs. You can. Schedule a send, which is something that you can do inside of Gmail as well, so like a lot of times if you're catching up on emails, 10 30 at night, but you don't necessarily know that people to know that you can schedule a send so that it goes at eight o'clock in the morning.
But what I really like about it is saying, for example, I reply to this person. I can tell boomerang to return this conversation to my inbox. Let me see if I can if I don't get a reply in four days or something like that, and this is a so that's really nice. So then I don't have to, so then it'll put it at the top of my inbox and remind me, you said you wanted a reminder and you haven't heard back from this person.
I love that system within a system. It's almost like, I mean, HubSpot does that, but HubSpot is not a free extension. So this is great to have it right in your Gmail.
Yes. So, uh, boomerang does have a few premium features, but to do that, you don't need it. And I think that the best feature that it has is reminding you if you haven't heard back from them. So yeah, that's basically the idea that you wanna do. You wanna, you know, get your folders organized, get your inbox organized in a way that you can easily see everything, and then just do Beth's favorite, which is sort before you answer.
Yes. Amanda, this has been so helpful. I know that it helped me. I know that it will help our listeners as well. Thank you so much for being here today. This was a lot of fun. I feel like I could talk to you forever.
I know it's very geeky that I could talk about email all day, but...
well, so could I, so it's perfect. So tell everybody how to get in touch with you, and how to get in touch with your podcast and your company, and everything that you're doing.
Yes. So you can find me at indigo organizing www indigo organizing.com to learn about my speaking. You can go to Amanda jefferson.com. My Instagram is at Hey dot Amanda J and you can find my podcast at goodenoughish.com
Thank you. Hey, Amanda, Jay for being here today and I hope everyone listens to the Good Enough-Ish podcast. Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week. Bye.