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How to Turn Off Alerts in Microsoft Outlook (in less than 2 min)

By Justin - Get free updates of new posts here

Distractions can cost you hours of productivity every day.

One of the worst distractions is the email alert that is turned on as a default in Microsoft Outlook.

If you receive 40 emails in a day, that is 40 times that your brain is slightly distracted and you can be knocked off task.

In a study done by the University of California, Irvine, it was shown that it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the task if you have been distracted. So if you just quickly checked that email that just popped up on your screen, you may not return to what you were working on for a long time.

The most prodctive way to use email is by reading and responding to your email in batches. You can set a time in your schedule when you will respond to email. Otherwise, you should not be in a reactive mindset. You should always be working to accomplish the most important tasks on your to do list.

How to Your Outlook Email Alerts:

  1. Open Microsoft Outlook
  2. Click on the file tab in the top left corner of the Outlook window/li>
  3. In the file menu, click on Options. A new window will then pop up.
  4. In the new window, click on the Mail button (on the left side)
  5. Look under the Message arrival section of that window
  6. You will see “When new message arrives:” and then five lines underneath with checkboxes
  7. Uncheck all five boxes, if they haven’t been unchecked already

Note: I recommend tunring off all five of these features, as just a sound or the envelope in the task bar can be distracing enough to get you off of task.

I also found this video that goes through the same process (although as mentioned above, you should uncheck all of the boxes in the last step):

Let me know if you have questions in the comments.

Filed Under: Email Management, Time Management

The Most Effective Time Management System

By Justin - Get free updates of new posts here


Image Source: Rozee.pk blog

How does doubling your productivity sound?

I’m sure that it sounds a bit too good to be true but I have become at least this much more productive after a few months of following the advice of Chet Holmes.

After reading The Ultimate Sales Machine, I implemented his time management system and have at least doubled my productivity. I’m working on important tasks that will build my business, instead of the easy tasks that I can just cross off a list.

With some, in the words of Chet, “pigheaded discipline”, you can make you and your firm much more productive by following his system.

Here are the key points:

1. Touch it once

If you touch it, then make sure that you move it to the next step along the path to being competed. If you don’t do this, you’ve just wasted time.

For example, if you read an email, respond to it. If you can’t respond to it right away, file it so that you can respond to it when you have scheduled time to do so, instead of constantly reading the same emails over and over. The same goes for memos, letters, agendas, etc.

2. Make lists of tasks (but only focus on getting done the most important items)

Every day, pick six items from your to do list that will produce the most value. Those are the only things that you should work on.

3. Plan how long you will work on each of the 6 items

Make a note of how long you will work on each of the 6 items.

4. Plan when you will complete each spefic task

Write out a schedule, which should include the exact times of when you are going to work on each specific task.

Items that are reactive like “got a minute” meetings and reading and responding to email, should also be scheduled into your day.

I like having this on paper, since the physical presence of it forces me to follow it since it is always right next to me. I also like the satisfaction of physically crossing an item off of the list.

5. Check how productive you’re being by checking your results

Most people check how productive they’ve been by checking the amount of items that they have crossed off the list at the end of the day. Attending a useless meeting or responding to 100 emails is not likely to have moved your practice forward.

Make sure that you are getting the important things done like planning strategy or cold calling to book meetings with potential clients.

6. Keep on pushing

This productivity system works extremely well, but it is not easy to follow.

It is always easy to say that you will plan your day tomorrow, or that you just have to reply to this email right now. In order for this system to work, you must have pigheaded discipline to work within your schedule and to schedule your day every day. After about a month it will become a habit and it will be much easier.

If you truly want to improve your practice, then start by increasing your productivity with this system. Once you have mastered it, you can push your staff to follow this system. Just think how much would get done if everyone in your practice was working on the six most important items on their to-do list today. It would likely be the most productive day in your practice’s history.

If you want to read about the system from Chet Holmes himself, you can find an article on his site here: How to Master Time Management.

Filed Under: Time Management

How to Setup An Autoresponder in Microsoft Outlook

By Justin - Get free updates of new posts here

This article gives you a more in depth description of how to setup an Outlook autoresponder that was suggested in our past article, 7 Amazing Ways to Manage Your Email Inbox.

Setting up the autoresponder is great when the office is busy, or if you’re lucky enough to be going on vacation. It’ll give you more time to reply by letting people know you won’t be able to get to their emails right away but you’ve received them. I’ll also explain how to send out the automatic response to all emails or only specific ones.

Note: if your email is not run by a Microsoft exchange server, the you must leave your computer turned on and Outlook running for the automated replies to be sent. If you’re not sure if your email is setup in this way, ask your IT department. If you don’t have an IT department, then your email isn’t likely setup on an MS Exchange server and you should leave your computer on.

Step 1: Create a message template

  1. On the File menu, point to New, and then click Mail Message.
  2. On the Options tab, in the Format group, click Plain Text.
  3. In the message body, type the message that you want to send as your automated reply.
  4. In the message window, click the Microsoft Office Button and then click Save As.
  5. In the Save As dialog box, in the Save as type list, click Outlook Template (*.oft).
  6. In the File name box, type a name for your message template, and then click Save.

Step 2: Create a rule to automatically reply to new e-mail messages

Do the following:

  1. On the Tools menu, click Rules and Alerts.
  2. In the Rules and Alerts dialog box, click New Rule.
  3. Under Start from a blank rule, click Check messages when they arrive, and then click Next.
  4. Under Which condition(s) do you want to check?, select the sent only to me check box and any other criteria that you want, and then click Next.
  5. When you see a dialog box informing you that this rule will be applied to every message that you receive, click Yes.
  6. Under What do you want to do with the message?, select the reply using a specific template check box.
  7. Under Step 2: Edit the rule description (click an underlined value), click a specific template.
  8. In the Select a Reply Template dialog box, in the Look In box, click User Templates in File System.
  9. Select the template that you created in the previous section, and then click Open.
  10. Click Next.
  11. Optionally, select the check boxes for any exceptions to the auto-reply rule.
  12. Click Next.
  13. Under Step 1: Specify a name for this rule, type a name for the auto-reply rule, and then click Finish.

The reply using a specific template rule in the Rules Wizard sends your automated reply only once to each sender during a single session. This rule prevents Outlook from sending repetitive replies to a single sender from whom you receive multiple messages. During a session, Outlook keeps track of the list of users to whom it has responded. If you exit Outlook and then restart it, however, the list of the senders who have received automated replies is reset.

How to turn off automatic replies

  1. On the Tools menu, click Rules and Alerts.
  2. On the E-mail Rules tab, under Name, clear the check box for the rule you want to turn off.

Filed Under: Email Management

Time Management Tips Powerpoint Presentation

By Justin - Get free updates of new posts here

Looking to significantly improve the productivity at your firm?

Here at Email Stopwatch, we have implemented the system included in the powerpoint presentation below and we have found a drastic increase in our productivity.

Time management

View more PowerPoint from Laura Berthiaume

Have questions? Leave a comment and we’ll get back to you.

You can find the Chet Holmes book here: Ultimate Sales Machine

Filed Under: Time Management

How to Get More Customers By Using Reviews On Your Website

By Justin - Get free updates of new posts here

Image Source: http://www.marketinginprogress.com

Looking for an explosion of new customers?

If you already have a site that gets some traffic but isn’t converting it into customers, then you’re I’m guessing that your site doesn’t have excellent reviews in the right places.

Why You Should Use Testimonials on Your Site

When potential customers are looking for an accountant, they want to find someone that they can trust. As an accountant you will be looked to as a source of knowledge about your client’s money and business, two things that are deeply important to most people. A potential client needs to feel that they can trust you before they will hire you.

It is really tough to build trust just from a website, however, there are a lot of customers who will base their decision on who to hire, solely based on the websites that they visit. Because of this, you want to make sure that your website shows, as best as possible, just how trustworthy you are. There are two main ways to do this:

  1. Give out very useful information for free, such as free reports, a blog, etc. Doing this shows that you’re knowledgable and considered a thought leader in your field.
  2. Show potential customers what your current customers have to say about you with reviews and testimonials.

Just a note that there are a few other small things that you can do, like including trust symbols on your site, however, the first two will have the largest impact on building trust.

How Do I Get Reviews?

Okay, so you’d like to put some review up on your site. To get reviews, I suggest asking your clients to leave reviews on third part sites, like Google Places or Yelp. There are two reasons for this:

  1. Sites like Yelp have their own traffic and when customers are looking for accountants on those sites, you will be ranked higher if you have a lot of excellent ratings.
  2. Reviews that have been posted on third part sites seem more believable, since you are not in direct control of what is posted.

If you’d like to see the step-by-step method that I’ve used to get reviews in the past, check out this article: How to Use Testimonials to Get More Customers for Your Accounting Firm.

What Part of the Review Should You Include On Your Site?

Now that some of your clients have left reviews on Google Places or Yelp, what you want to do is take some of the most descriptive and emotional sentences from the reviews, and highlight them on your site. For example, something like “Justin is a great accountant” sounds good but doesn’t really convince a potential client that I am any better than other accountants. A better quote to pull out is something like this: “Justin found $1000 in tax savings in our first year”, because it is specific. Another good example would be, “I really like working with Justin because I can tell that cares about me and my business”, because it shows emotion.

Now that you’ve gathered the most emotional or specific sentences from your review, you’re probably wondering where to put them.

Where Should You Put Reviews or Testimonials on Your Site?

I’ve found that a combination of the following two methods work best:

  1. Put a testimonial or two right next to the places where your website visitors are going to make a decision to get closer to contacting you. A few places where this works is on your contact us page, on your home page (preferably next to your contact information or a button that brings you to your contact us page). Any other landing pages that you have built on your site where the specific purpose is to get a potential client to contact you is also a good place for reviews.
  2. Build a page just with testimonials. This page should have a link on your main navigation bar and can list the different testimonials. I like to group testimonials about different topics on this page. For example, if you have some testimonials that talk about how good you are with tax minimization, then you should make a group for that. Below that group, you can make a section of testimonials that talk about how much you care about your clients. In between each section of testimonials, you should have a call to action, where you remind the potential client how they can contact you. It doesn’t have to be overly pushy, just a reminder that if they are looking for an accountant, how they can get in contact with you.

Got questions? Leave a comment and we’ll make sure to get back to you.

Filed Under: Marketing

How To Create Labels and Folders in Microsoft Outlook

By Justin - Get free updates of new posts here

This article gives you a more in depth description of how to create labels and folders from our past article, 7 Amazing Ways to Manage Your Email Inbox.

Folders will let you group emails for easier sorting. More specifically you want to create two folders to improve inbox efficiency, one for reference emails and one for actionable emails, described in more detail in the original blog post. This can be done in four simple steps, shown below:

To Create a Folder:

On the File menu, point to New, and then click Folder.
In the Name box, enter a name for the folder (this is where you can create your two folders, reference and actionable).
In the Folder contains box, click the type of folder you want to create.
In the Select where to place the folder list, click the location for the folder.

The Microsoft Office site helped me put this together for you.

Let me know if you have any questions in the comments.

Filed Under: Email Management

Get More Business With Client Reviews

By Justin - Get free updates of new posts here


Along with working on Email Stopwatch, I have another small business that I run. When I went to find an accountant for my small business I started by asking friends if they had suggestions for a good accountant. I didn’t get any recommendations that I loved so I went to the web.

IMPORTANT: Reviews of Accountants are Few and Far Between

I was very disappointed to find such a small amount of reviews of accountants online. Since there are so few this is a huge opportunity for accountants to bring in a lot more business, especially those who work mostly with small and medium businesses.

Why Are Reviews Important?

There are three reasons:
1. Excellent reviews of your firm will convince potential clients that you are worth hiring.
2. Google will give your business a higher search result in some searches if you have a lot of high quality reviews.
3. Review sites, like Yelp.com, have their own traffic where people look for services. If you have high quality reviews, then it is more likely that a potential client will find you.

How to get reviews on third party sites

Getting reviews online is easy. The process can be started in less than 30min and can pay large dividends. All it usually requires is for you to ask. Not everybody is going to agree, but in a small business that I previously ran, about 60% of the clients that I asked would leave a review.

Step 1: Set Up Profiles on Yelp and Google Places

I’ve put together a video on how to setup an account on yelp.com in the video below:

Here’s the link where you can setup your Yelp! profile: Setup Yelp! here

I also found this video on how to setup a Google Places page:

Here’s the link where you can setup your Google Places page: Setup Google Places here

You now have a Google Places and Yelp account. Nice work! Make sure to note the url of both of your pages.

Step 2: Get Those Reviews!

Now that you a place where your customers can leave reviews, all you have to do is ask. I find that it best to ask right after you have successfully helped out a client with a problem, as they are likely to have a great feeling about your work. You can also just generally ask (the email below is written for just a general ask).

Here is a sample email that you can use to ask your clients for reviews:

Hi _,

I hope all is well!

I’m emailing for a semi-selfish reason. We’re looking to grow our business and one of the things that we want to do is get some reviews online from our current clients.

With that said, it would be greatly appreciated if you could leave a review on my Google places page: [put the url of your Google Place page here] or on yelp: [put the url of your yelp page here]. We’re hoping that you can leave us a review because these will help us convince other clients to hire us.

It shouldn’t take you more than a few minutes to leave the review. If you can’t think of what to write about, here are some ideas on what you could comment on:
– our professionalism
– how responsive or helpful we are
– anything else that you like about our services

Thanks again!

[Your Name Here]

I’ve used a similar email for the past 6 months and almost every person that I’ve sent it to has left me a review.

Just a note that there are a few psychological techniques that I use in this second email to make it work, but I’m not going to get into them. I just want you to know that to use it and the reviews will start flowing in.

Now all you have to do is implement. DO IT NOW!

Feel free to email me at [email protected] if you have any questions with this material.

I’d also love to hear about all of the awesome reviews that you’ve been getting.

Here’s a post on how to get more customers by using customer testimonials on your website.

Filed Under: Marketing

7 Amazing Ways to Manage Your Inbox

By Justin - Get free updates of new posts here

Email ManagementDuring busy season it can be so hard to manage to constant stream of emails.

These simple tips will ease the burden.

Note: As a bonus, we’ll be doing follow-up posts with screen shots outlining how to do each one.

1. Create labels and folders to keep you organized

All email can be broken into two categories:

  1. Referenceable: This category of emails can easily be dealt with by reading and filing them.
  2. Actionable: This category encompasses most emails and requires an action step.

By separating the actionable emails, it will remove the less common referenceable emails, and make your inbox less full.

Scan your inbox for the obvious referenceable emails, read them and get them out of there! Now that you’re only looking at the actionable emails, you can read through them from top to bottom and respond. You can also easily create sub-folders so they will be easier to find in the future (ex. leads, to do, Inter-office, etc.).

If you don’t know how to setup folders in Outlook, check out our article on how to create folders and labels in Microsoft Outlook.

See below for steps on how to better manage your actionable emails.

2. Set specific times to check your email (and don’t violate them!)

Set aside 1-2 uninterrupted periods a day to process email in batches, ideally they would be fixed times throughout the week.

Trying to do it as soon as they come in is extremely disruptive to your work flow.

Since you’re going to feel annoyed at the interruption, you’re not going to be able to fully focus on the response, compared to if you were writing that response in ‘email mode’. You can still scan your email occasionally for urgent messages but don’t go into any of them unless absolutely necessary until the designated time.
To implement this, try these two steps:

  1. Turn off any notification settings in your email providers settings
  2. Set an alarm on your computer for the designated email processing time

3. Only read the emails you’re prepared to answer

If you’ve received emails from certain clients you know you’re not ready to tackle then just leave it alone for now. You’re wasting time reading an email and leaving it for awhile, only to have it in the back of your mind AND wasting more time, since you’ll have to re-read that email again before you respond. You also run the embarrassing risk of forgetting about the email or wasting more time constantly scanning your inbox to make sure you didn’t forget about an email. Either respond or leave it!

4. Keep content short and sweet

This has two benefits, one, it will prevent follow-up clarification emails and two, it will encourage your correspondent(s) to do the same. Use the following guidelines for reference:

  1. Subject lines should indicate exactly what the content of your email is
  2. If it’s a reply, briefly reference the context of your response so your recipient doesn’t have to scroll through all the previous emails to figure out what you’re talking about
  3. Only address what’s necessary, not every point may need to a response
  4. Answer in point form if possible, it will be much easier for your reader to digest
  5. Make any action steps or requests very clear
  6. If there are multiple individuals on the email (CC’d), break down the thoughts or requests for specific individuals by writing after their initials. (ex. LB- please reserve the conference room for 2pm, DC- please order the sandwiches, etc.)

5. Quickly re-read emails before sending

With the constant stream of emails you get, it can be tempting to churn out responses as quickly as possible. I strongly encourage you to fight the urge. Professional communication should clear without typos and grammatical errors. There’s no second chance once you hit the send button.

6. Use your autoresponder during a busy season

When you’re working 10+ hours a day, it’s can be really frustrating trying to stay on top of all your inbox messages. During this season you need a little more time so set up an autoresponder message letting people know that you’re very busy and it will be X time (hours or days) before you will have a chance to respond.

This will serve a few purposes, to:

  1. Give you a longer grace period for a response
  2. Prevent negative feelings because your clients feel like they’re being ignored
  3. Prevent people from re-sending messages because they think it didn’t go through, adding to your inbox insanity.

If you’re not sure how to setup autoresponders in Microsoft Outlook, you can learn how to do it here: How to create Out of Office Autoresponders in Microsoft Outlook.

7. Do not respond to messages that don’t require one

Our email obsessed culture is reaching a breaking point with email communication… it’s going to consume our days if we don’t learn how to manage it better. Part of that is cutting off conversations that aren’t relevant or important. Emails that don’t REQUIRE a response can be filed away in your reference folder. It’s not rude and it will encourage others to do the same.

Let us know how you if you have any additional tips for managing your email.

Filed Under: Email Management

The Secret Powers of Time

By Justin - Get free updates of new posts here

Watch this video to see how your perception of time affects your work, health and well-being.

This video is narrated by the author of The Time Paradox, Professor Philip Zombardo.

What’s really interesting is that Philip and his team have put together a free questionnaire that you can take that will tell you more about the way that you perceive time. I took it and it really made me aware of how I think time and how it relates to my life. You can find it here: Time Perception Questionnaire

The results questionnaire made me realize that I generally will worry about the future, instead of enjoying the present. Although this is good in many ways, it also could potentially make me less happy because I’m always worried about the future instead of enjoying the present. The survey really gave me an interesting amount of insight and I highly recommend it.

If you’re interested in learned more about how you perceive time, you can get The Time Paradox on Amazon here: The Time Paradox

Filed Under: Time Management

5 Extraordinary Productivity and Time Management Articles

By Justin - Get free updates of new posts here

Time and Productivity TipsFinding enough time in the day to get everything done is tough.

I’ve tried a few different tactics to make my days more efficient, but I’ve found that a lot of the advice available on the internet is junk.

That is why I decided to put together this list of my 5 favorite articles on time management and productivity. These articles will ACTUALLY help you better manage your time.

So without further ado, here are five of my favorite time management/productivity articles:

The thoughts in this Wall Street Journal article are fantastic. How much time are you spending on unimportant things, like checking email and Facebook? This article dosen’t provide tactics, but more of an overall strategy to thinking about how you spend your time: Are You As Busy As You Think?

If you spend a lot of your time in useless meetings, then you’ll love these thoughts from Seth Godin: Getting serious about your meeting problem

From one of the writers and stars of our favorite TV show, Jerry Seinfeld’s tip on how to accomplish things: Jerry Seinfeld’s Productivity Secret

A fantistic article on organizing your email so that you save time by focusing on what needs to get done instead of tasks for others: The Airtight Inbox: A Day In the Life Of an Email Productivity Evangelist

Lastly, although some of the answers are better than others, I found that this page from Quora gives you a variety of time management tactics: How can I increase my productivity?

Do you have a favourite time management or productivity article? Leave it in the comments.

Filed Under: Time Management

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