Hi, everybody. I'm Randy Dean, the email sanity expert, and I thought you might enjoy this little snippet from my distracted to productive preview program. Quick question, how many of you are a little more distracted? Maybe than you used to be? Quite a bit more distracted than you were maybe 1015 years ago. I wonder why we're more distracted.

Let's think about this. Why are people so distracted? Email, voicemail, snail mail documents, documents, faxes, text messages, social media, office clutter in person interruptions, smartphones and tablets and all of the related apps. Oh, my. And look at the side. How many of these are new in about the last 1015 years?

Quite a few. As a matter of fact, I remember when the single biggest distraction there was was the television who remembers when the TV and there was all these things in like late 70s 80s people are watching More television than they were even working their full time job. You remember there used to be stories about that. And I'm old enough to remember when I was the remote control anybody remember those days? Yeah. Ready to go.

I hated those UHF channels. Remember that? Yeah. So So I remember those days. And so what happened was we grew up in an age most of us before we had so much of this. And it's all come online.

And I think it's led to the rise of this thing right here. A DD What's that? adult attention deficit disorder? How many of you feel more add than you ever used to be? And it's because we've got all of this stuff hitting us. I saw a statistic the other day, when you count up advertisements, plus all of this five to 10,000 potential inputs per day.

Wow. And so we're struggling. And so what I wanted, you know, what I think it's led into is this thing right here called the squirrel syndrome squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. And by the way, do you know how freaking hard it is to get that picture right there? Yeah, I took that picture. And I'm like, My neighbors think I'm nuts.

I'm walking around going, you know, and they're like, what's this guy doing with this phone in the squirrels? It's a little odd. So yeah, but I want to talk about this because in order to control these things you got to have, you got to have this thing down. And I only have a little bit of time today. So what I want to do is focus in on that big one email. How many of you by the way, how many of you just love working on your email?

I actually got Whoa, you know, I had a, we had every once in a while somebody does raise their hand to that question. I had a woman the other day she goes, I like to click on him and watch him go away. Yeah, okay. Yeah. So So yeah, how many of you are stressing out right now because you know, emails are coming in while I'm up here speaking is now where it will get number of yet. And so what I want to do is hit this to hit this one a little bit.

While I've got a little time with you. This is the harsh reality and by the way, this is the also Is this your poor career choice? You're gonna find out if you made a poor career choice here. How many hours per day does the average American office based professional spend, simply reading responding to and administrating their emails? In hours pretty give me some guesses. Four and a half.

That's pretty sweet. cific number two is three. Can't tell he's doing this. Is that a two or three? All right. Okay, three.

So three to four and a half three to 432563636. had not? Most of you going yeah, yeah, sound about right. Had this woman in Orlando a couple three weeks ago speaking to conference. Here's how she answered the question. And I quote 12 you feel the poor air sucking out of this lady, right? Yeah, so some people are doing quite a bit more than even three to five.

The actual average, though, is just a little bit more than two. But most audiences I speak to I'm getting that two to five average pretty consistently. Which means if you think about it, 25 to 50% of a typical workday. You're just doing inbox. Right. follow up question How many of you before today and can't raise your hand if you've ever been to one of my sessions before?

How many of you before today have ever had a formal strategic level email management course? You got one. I just added in Vegas to it especially in Vegas a couple three years ago. 500 and 50 people in the audience, for people raise their hand, what I'm seeing consistently around the United States, Canada and Europe, one to 3% of working professionals have had training on a tool that takes 25 to 50% of their work day. Wow. Which is, frankly very good for yours truly, what a great little niche.

I love email dysfunction. It's a wonderful thing. But here's the thing, I want to give you some strategies right off the bat. Well, I got a couple minutes here with you. Because here's the here's the statistics. It's crazy.

Look at some of these statistics first half of you doing 25 to 50% or more, one to 3% return. Look at this statistic, because of the way you're doing it. You're looking at each and every email, you get three to seven times, you're reading them over and over again. Additionally, get this you're checking your inbox 20 or more times per day, which is every few minutes. Now that's one pretty big squirrel right there when you agree squirrel squirrel, bubbling. All right, and additionally 13% of your national clinical addiction your phones.

More than 30% of high school and college students with phones are clinically addicted. I believe there are now three recovery centers around the United States for electronic addiction, not drugs or alcohol. phones. Wow. Do you know that a significant percentage of high school and college kids wake up between two and four in the morning to check their feeds? That's no joke.

That's scary. All right. Additionally, you're looking at your phone 150 times per day. That's the average person and get this. You're also getting 10 to 25 people stopping by your desk tapped me on the shoulder phone calls you had in text that might go up to 40 to 50. Because of this 95% of working professionals report being distracted at least some point during the day.

And for the life of me, I am trying to figure out who's the last 5% what like my housekeeper Who's Who is this percent. But here's the problem with this, if you don't have strategies for managing this stuff, you're at significantly, like more likely risk of overwhelm and overload. And so what you have to do is you got to have some strategies here. So I want to dive into that email thing. here's, here's two ways email owns you two key ways. One, you're looking at it way too much.

Okay, so we're going to talk about that maybe a little bit. Second one, you should read them over and over again, same one same messages over and over again, doing nothing with them. Doesn't that sound a little bit crazy, by the way, doing reading, doing the same thing over and over again? Doing nothing with it? It's a little anybody know, the clinical definition of insanity? That's pretty close, isn't it?

So let's dive into that. Part Two, I become pretty well known for this little thing. It's called my decision tree for email, and it walks you right through what you do in an email. Now, first thing I'll tell people if you get an email or something you can have a quick what do you do? Get it done? Why are you looking at it multiple times, just deal with it, get it done and get it gone.

Longer ones, go on to your task list and or your calendar Alright, Tasker calendar Now once you've got an email either done or on your tasks to your calendar, do you need that in your inbox anymore? No Then you only got two choices then what are your two choices with that email? deleted because you no longer need it or file it into an appropriate sub folder archive location. What if you don't have a good folder to put it in? He looks fine funny sometimes this point people go delete it. Make a folder put it there.

Is there rocket science? That is not rocket science. Would you agree that's not right. That's advanced common sense. But what do they say about common sense? Not all that common right although sort of funny I'm speaking at this event down in Huntsville, Alabama.

A couple years ago. This was funny. I'm in Huntsville. You know, that's where space campus you know, the NASA rocket parks down there. And I'm speaking right outside the hotel Saturn five rocket no kid, and I didn't know but in the room that day, I actually had a legitimate NASA rocket scientists in the audience. And I go, is that rocket science?

Nickels? Yes, it is. StumbleUpon problems. No, it's not rocket science. It's just advanced common sense. And did you know tools like outlook in Gmail can help you with this?

Watch this. Alright, I'm going to pop in, by the way, who would like that as their inbox? And I want to really hate me. I left those in here. So I'd have something to show you today. All right, almost every workday, I get that baby all the way down to zero.

But here's the thing. Does that mean I've gotten everything done? Not at all. All it means is that if I couldn't deal with what is in that email right now, it moves out of my inbox into one of my two primary day to day planning tools, which would be we've already mentioned What are they calendar or task list and watch this outlook and help you check this out. Alright, so I got this test email to show you how to do conversions. But my actual task is I have a whole series of bonus PDFs in little electronic form that I'd like to offer all of us and so I'm gonna show to share with you how to do that at the end of the session.

You got one of them in your bags, I put one of my little articles in your bag. But check this out. Check this out. I can take this email left click hold the click drag it down here to the word task, drop it. That's drag and drop Microsoft Outlook that creates brand new task Billy's taken subject lines wrong. Send PDFs.

I can type and the W, no due date. Now we'll say today, that probably happened tomorrow actually, because I'm traveling right after this priority high category, client prospect category, marketing PR and you know, a category, maybe I will add Angela onto this. How long did that take? A few seconds. 1015 seconds. And I was talking if I'm not talking, I can do that in eight seconds flat.

I convert that email into a task that actually is but do you have to do it in Outlook tasks? Not necessarily. How many of you instead start your day with your sticky who does a sticky? Okay, we got to be able to stick no Randy I do the big sheet of paper task list who's got their big sheet of paper up and sheet paper. How many of you actually use a tool like outlook tasks? looked at quite a few anybody use in Google tasks.

There's actually a pretty robust little test tool in Google that I sometimes teach to anybody here have a cool smartphone or tablet task app. And how many even just saving these reminders in your calendar, anybody doing that little number that sort of counts as a sort of a sort of turn it into a task? All of these are viable potential options for turning an email into the task that it is if you can't get it done right now? All of them, right? I don't care which one you use, whichever one you're most comfortable with. Let me ask you this.

How many of you, how come first, some of you raised your hand several times? I got like six Tesla's What are you doing? Trying to figure out which task list to look at? All right. I don't know how many of you raised your hand to any one of those tests anyone? So most of you doing some form of a to do list at the start of day.

Did you know that step one for being diagnosed? type a step one. It's not the full test. You want the full test all of you doing your little daily task list. Have you ever done something that wasn't even on that test? list and then you wrote it down.

Just you could check it off. Type A diagnosed. Alright, yeah, actually in my outlook class I show why that genius to do just that. So that's pretty cool. And by the way, if you don't trust yourself when you're doing this, just do this let this reminder Save and Close. Bam, do it.

There it is. Look, I can set it up. So my task list comes and finds me if I don't trust myself when I first do this. I can have it so pops right up and then I can do what pretty much everybody in America does when you do one of these news, okay. All right. But wait, But wait, there's more.

Hold on. Let me see. Maybe I should black time on my calendar to send you one of these. Okay, let's drop that to calendar. Oh, and look at this. I can pop right in here.

Send PDFs and dw location. Home Office. East Lansing, Michigan. Yes, I'm a Michigan State guy. All right. enemy territory out here.

Okay. And tomorrow at one o'clock. How long does it take? Second splat, I've turned that thing into a calendar item. But wait one more. Let's close this want to save changes?

No. I'd like to get this random guy into my contact database that way I'll never forget who I am. Left click hold to click drag it down here to people or contacts drop it. That also creates a brand new contact item in Microsoft Outlook. We'll take a look at this. It doesn't just populate name.

It populates email for me automatically nice. But hold on. Look, the email text is over here. And I can page down here to the signature. Oh, look at that job title. Let me grab that job title.

Pick that up. Move up to that up here to job title. Let me grab that phone number right there. Pick that up. Move that right over here to phone. Let me grab that mobile number right there.

Pick that up. Move that right over here. Mobile. How long did that take? Devin that's my magic trick. All right, Whoa, did y'all notice I didn't even do a copy and paste right there.

I did an end click drag over and move uh what? Watch close and click on the end of the text you want to select drag over to highlight it. Once it's highlighted, release the click then you can Pick it up, move it wherever it goes. And once you master that little trick, that'll save you a couple seconds every time. But that doesn't just work in Microsoft Outlook. Listen to this that works in the entire Microsoft Office Suite, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, as well as in Gmail, as well as in Google Docs.

You can take a piece of text or data in the wrong place in your document or file, highlight it, pick it up and move it to the right place, saving you a couple seconds every time once you master it, which means I just gave all of you two extra days this year right there. Pretty cool. And now I'm sorry, Gmail users that whole drag and drop thing that does not work that does not work in Gmail, sorry, but hey, Gmail user Did you know you can pick up and open a Gmail and once you go in, you can go to the More button and add it to Google tasks or add it to the Google Calendar. And if you just put your mouse over the sender's name, and leave it there for a second. It'll pop up. Oops, did yeah.

Hold on. Let's try it again. context. Wait, that's not the same. But that is more Definitely the same. See what you can do here.

This is just one of the strategies I share when it comes to contact management. I do distraction items, program and distraction management. I do a program on taming the email beast, how to better use Microsoft Outlook, how to better use Gmail and how to better use your smartphones and tablets. So keep me in mind if you're looking for somebody share this kind of info with your audience. Thank you everybody. Thank you for taking the time to watch my little preview program of my distracted to productive program.

Check out my website for more information on my full length programs and workshops. I look forward to hopefully working with you soon.