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So I'm pretty good at email... At least with my 'work' email accounts.
It's what we do at ProAssisting -providing remote executive assistance to clients is ALL about being on top of your email as the starting point- day in and day out. That's client/business/work/boss email.
As for my personal email accounts, one is pretty good (286 emails in my inbox; most labeled; file system) one is atrocious (1,000s of emails in my inbox; nothing labeled; file system was given up on years ago).
You may find that surprising coming from someone who wrote a very detailed blog post on email inbox management but it falls into that "do as I say, not as I do" on the personal side. For the business side, I'm all in on my email inbox management advice but if I did that for my personal email it would feel like work... And who wants that?
I would be lying if I didn't feel a tinge of guilty every time I had to triage my personal email accounts -read: daily-just to try and keep up.
Enter @hey.com.
I've admired Basecamp from afar so when the founders of that company decide to 'reinvent' email -just like hundreds before them- of course I had to take a look. Initially, it seemed OK but paying $100 per year for personal email seemed kinda steep to me.
But then a few things happened that convinced me to take the leap and finally get my personal email account under control.
Here's what changed:
So I'm pretty good at email... At least with my 'work' email accounts.
It's what we do at ProAssisting -providing remote executive assistance to clients is ALL about being on top of your email as the starting point- day in and day out. That's client/business/work/boss email.
As for my personal email accounts, one is pretty good (286 emails in my inbox; most labeled; file system) one is atrocious (1,000s of emails in my inbox; nothing labeled; file system was given up on years ago).
You may find that surprising coming from someone who wrote a very detailed blog post on email inbox management but it falls into that "do as I say, not as I do" on the personal side. For the business side, I'm all in on my email inbox management advice but if I did that for my personal email it would feel like work... And who wants that?
I would be lying if I didn't feel a tinge of guilty every time I had to triage my personal email accounts -read: daily-just to try and keep up.
Enter @hey.com.
I've admired Basecamp from afar so when the founders of that company decide to 'reinvent' email -just like hundreds before them- of course I had to take a look. Initially, it seemed OK but paying $100 per year for personal email seemed kinda steep to me.
But then a few things happened that convinced me to take the leap and finally get my personal email account under control.
Here's what changed:
- world@hey.com - You see, this blog post is just an email that I sent to world@hey.com from my @hey.com email account and poof, here it is on my personal blog. I had gotten away from writing personally as of late and the idea to have a frictionless way to post to a personal blog was intriguing.
- On a Saturday morning a few weeks ago, I watched THIS VIDEO on YouTube of Jason Fried giving a 37 minute overview of @hey.com email. I thought I'd watch 34 seconds of it like most videos but 37 minutes later my wife was none too please that I was STILL watching a video about email when I SHOULD HAVE been playing with the kids. The reason that I stuck with the whole video is because Jason was talking my language about email... How I use and think about email AND he made it LOOK and SOUND SOOOOO easy.
- bull@hey.com was available! Growing up with the last name Bull was a curse in 6th grade but in college and beyond a blessing for sure. The idea of having bull@hey.com email address was enticing indeed.
- I'm able to write off the $100 per year as a business expense for research and development purposes. Providing remote executive assistant services DOES involve personal work for our clients and if they decide they want to clean up their personal email too, I could suggest this as a solution.
So I took the leap.
And I'm really liking it because I can feel the time saved on a daily basis by not having to triage personal email just to keep up and I get this nifty little blog to boot.
How'd I do it?
Pretty simple actually. Here's how:
- Watch Jason's video linked to above to really see if you want to give this a shot. 37 minutes on the front end could save you hours on the back end like I'm experiencing now.
- Sign-up for a @hey.com email account.
- Forward your personal email addresses to your @hey.com. This is NOT hard but if you need a hand, email me at my email listed above and I'll walk you through it.
- Be VERY thoughtful about who and what email you 'approve' into your @hey.com email account AND which list they go in to (there are only 3 so this isn't hard). SIDE NOTE: Since you're forwarding your email from other personal accounts, you can set it so that none of those emails are deleted and you will still have access to them if needed.
- After a few days or a couple of weeks, you'll notice that you're not approving any more email to come into @hey.com and you're good to go.
A month since signing up and I'm a convert. Are you looking to get a hold of your personal email too? Give @hey.com a try... you just might like it too.