Keeping it Clean

Real Estate Rainmaker: Keeping it Clean

Thoughts on correlation between email productivity and a clean inbox.

Automatic Searching

Q - What do the following services have in common? Backtype.com, Blogsearch.Google.com, Search.Twitter.com

A - They all allow updates, either via RSS or email, whenever your particular search term is found.

Between the three of them, you can be notified if someone mentions your name, your company, your competitors, or even your current gadget love interest, be it in a blog entry, comment, or even a tweet. We all have something that we enjoy reading about or knowing about, why not give them a try? Subscribe to their alerts via RSS or email, and let the updates start rolling in.

(note: News.Google.com has RSS feeds for their search terms as well, if you are looking for mainstream news outlets)

Cutting the Fat

Verizon's email client on their cell phones is pretty much garbage, so I've abandoned using it altogether. Opting to simply forward my personal email, all of it, to my cell phone's SMS email address. Basically letting the text messaging act as an instant email notification. This had a very unexpected side effect, though. It made me very conscious about what exactly I was getting in my email.

Every email message is now sent to my phone, and I realized just how much garbage I was getting. Things that I really don't care about, that I was always a bit too lazy to opt-out of, but still didn't mind deleting on a regular basis, week after week, or month after month. Not really spam, just solicited advertising that I had been given due to my email address being in some companies database.

It certainly gave me the incentive to take the few seconds to opt out of those emails. Got me thinking, also, as to how many other people do the same thing. Legitimate email advertisements, that they don't even read, but never bother to opt out of, just deleting them over and over ad nauseam.