Here’s a simple task that will save you 2-5 minutes per day that your OFS can do.
But…it’s not just about the 2-5 minutes (well, it is…but there’s so much more). It’s about the mental energy saved by not dealing with small things like this.
Have them unsubscribe from unwanted newsletters and archive unwanted emails.
I can’t create this training for you because it’s different for everyone, but here’s how I did it.
The first email task I had my OFS do for me was to unsubscribe me from stuff I didn’t sign up for. I made a screen recording video of me doing it and explaining it to her.
The first time she did it, she missed a few because she wasn’t sure. But after having her do it a few more times, she now does it perfectly, every time.
It took me like 10 minutes (total) of training across multiple days to accomplish this. That was like 3 years ago. Saves me a minute or two per day.
Once she was good at that, we moved on to archiving emails I want, but don’t want to see. I repeated the process. Train, try it, train, try it, train, try it…
I’m still giving feedback occasionally on this because she is cautious so I don’t miss an important email. But this has probably saved me 1-2 minutes per day for the past few years.
Then we moved on to creating draft emails to specific types of emails. Train, try, train, try, …
Once she got good enough at it that I stopped editing the drafts, I had her just write and send them.
This has saved me 5-30 minutes per day for the past year or so.
Yeah, that’s more time saved than I told you initially. The point is, there are small things you can have someone do for you.
The other reason for this is to illustrate how I accomplish a complex task like this. This was teaching her to think like me in a very personal part of my life (my personal inbox). It’s an iterative process. Train, do a little work, feedback, repeat.
I probably dealt with 20 emails today. That’s it.
But that’s years of purposefully trying to keep it manageable. I know you get 300+ emails per day. Start small and cut it down. Getting hundreds of emails is not a badge of honor.
Once they get better at it, it’s not hard to find what else they can do.
John
Ps. Today we transitioned from coastal Croatia to inland Croatia. 3300ft climb from the ocean over the pass. We took this pic when we had a good view of where we came from. It gives a good idea of how we travel and how we carry all our “luggage”.
