How to Eliminate email Overwhelm with Dr. Kayvon K.

Dr. Kavon K returns to the Simplifying Entrepreneurship podcast today for a conversation around the idea of email and how to reduce the overwhelm of seeing hundreds or thousands of email in your inbox!! We’ll talk Inbox Zero!

Here’s a glance at what you’ll learn from our discussion in this episode:

• How to filter unnecessary email so that they go into a file to review later - automagically!
• Ari Meisel’s 3 D’s that apply for email, but for many other parts of your life as well.
• How to get hours of your month back by not having to go back over the same email time and again
• How to snooze and schedule email so that you aren’t being bothered, or bothering others at inconvenient times.

Kayvon always brings it when we have these chats, and you’ll want to hear this episode!

To get in touch with Kayvon you can go to www.talktokayvon.com or visit his website at www.simplify.zone

If you’re ready to transform your entrepreneurial frustrations into freedoms by cutting through the chaos and using frameworks that help you run an even better business and enjoy an even better life, simply go to:   www.Mohr.Coach

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Transcript

Kayvon  00:00

You want to go through this process of the 3 Ds, with the emails that are actually meant for you, because we all get emails that are sent to a group or newsletter or that sort of thing, or the ones that they are specifically for you, Peter, this email is from Kay Avon to you. And he's saying something, he's waiting for a response as opposed to something that is just sent to a group, usually a notification or a newsletter or something that it's not time sensitive.

Pete Mohr  00:28

Hey, it's Pete, and welcome to the simplifying entrepreneurship podcast the series designed to help you change your entrepreneurial worries and wants into wins by providing the tips and tools that will help you cut through the chaos and create clarity, allowing you the ability to level up your business and life. Always remember, you lead your business and it shouldn't lead you. And this week, I'm talking with my good friend and returning guest cave on. And we had a great chat on email, overwhelm, and inbox zero. And it kind of got into some proper decision making. This week I'm talking to my good friend and returning guest cave on and we had a great chat on email, overwhelm, and inbox zero, and how all of that ties into the productivity and decision making tools that you have in your arsenal. We chat about if your inbox is an organized, it's a sign of where other areas of your business in life are as well. And how to make decisions through Ari Meizell's framework of do delete and defer. cleaning up your inbox will really reduce your frustration and give you a real sense of freedom and empowerment so that you can go on and tackle other things. It's just a really enlightening feeling. So at this point, we're going to dig right into the interview with Kayvon. Do you dread the thought of opening your email? The 50 unread messages, the 66,000 under neath that one. I mean, it gets a little overwhelming sometimes. So happy to have with me today Kayvon from simplify dot zone, and we're going to talk about all of those things surrounding email overwhelm. And do you suffer from email overwhelmed? So Kayvon Welcome to the show today.

Kayvon  02:13

Hello, Pete. How are you doing?

Pete Mohr  02:14

Awesome. Awesome. I'm happy to be here today. Great to have you with us.

Kayvon  02:18

Thank you. Yeah, email, overwhelm, or this whole idea of inbox, it can be very tricky. In our day-to-day life, for sure, yes. So how about we start with a little bit of a cheeky question. Yeah. Well, I'm going to ask you this question. But this is actually a question for everyone who's listening to this right now, for sure. How many emails do you have in your inbox right now?

Pete Mohr  02:42

Right now? I probably have about 2020. And how many of them are read? Maybe four?

Kayvon  02:50

Okay. Very good. And I'm sure we will get all sorts of answers to that question, like from a few dozen to a few 100,000. And I have worked with clients to like, there was a case I think about 20,000 email, or 50,000, or something like that in the inbox, and just that number is overwhelming, right? Isn't it? Oh, my gosh, it absolutely is, when I made the move to sort of this inbox 03 or four years ago, it just changed everything. And I was one of those guys.

Pete Mohr  03:23

I think when I went through and did my massive dump, it was around 12 or 14,000 emails that I got rid of all within an hour.

Kayvon  03:32

Yes. And how did you feel right after that?

Pete Mohr  03:35

Oh, just the weight has been lifted. It's such a freeing experience.

Kayvon  03:41

Yes, I'm so happy that you put it that way. Because that is the main point. It's not about having more emails or less emails, it's not about organization is some knowledge, it's about having that sense of freedom, and not having that weight on our shoulders, and creating more space, more space for creativity, more space for focus, more space for strategy, and that sort of thing. Because if you're limiting working with limited space, it's like a computer with a short amount of RAM. And it will get the job done. But it never as good as, you know, other cases when the RAM is empty, or not as fast as and that sort of thing. So protecting and enhancing our mental RAM is the main point behind thinking about email, overwhelm, or any other thing when it comes to productivity being effective, efficient and, and that sort of thing.

Pete Mohr  04:35

I completely agree. I think the whole thing when I'm working with people regarding around this subject, it's all about relieving that time to get your time back. You know, we've talked about this in one of our earlier episodes. I think there's only 24 hours in a day. Yes. How much time are you spending going through those emails and I think one of the big frustrations it's like you said, how many of them have actually been opened? Well, there are a couple that I still must navigate through before I hopped on this message. I'm going to get back to

Kayvon  05:00

Yes. But ultimately, when you look at that sort of thing, to free up your mind and allow yourself to get to the things that need to be done is such a crucial piece. And yes, it's literally, it's literally life changing. It is for a bunch of reasons. One is we just talked about, you know, creating that extra room to feel better, be happier to be more satisfied with our cells and our work. Therefore, we can focus better and strategize better and create better, on the other hand, is what we talked about one of the previous episodes to the way you do anything is the way you do everything. Yeah, whatever is going on your inbox is a good indication of whatever is going on in everywhere else. So if you end up with one place, your inbox, an organized place, an empty place, something that you can rely on, it will ooze into your other skills, time management, project management, client management, and all of that. All of these skills always into each other. Because, as our coach and good friend are in my cell says, the Inbox Zero email overwhelm is not a inbox problem. It's a decision-making problem, exactly as in, are we letting things just to hang there and create most get more space and take more space and take more space? Or are we taking care of things, processing the mail going through them quickly, and taking care of the ones that we can take care of at the right time. So that organization and freedom will ooze into everything else too, because that becomes your default way of thinking when it comes to requests, and customer questions. And project management and deadlines and all of that.

Pete Mohr  06:41

Yeah, I mean, now that we're talking about Ari, why don't you? I mean, you've worked a lot more with Ari than I have. We both have learned a lot of stuff from our Yes, but you've had more interaction, and I love that framework, the three DS Why don't you just sort of explain that, because that has a lot to do with Inbox Zero. But like you said earlier, it has a lot to do with decision making period.

Kayvon  07:01

Yes. And that's how our design is the 3d model. I don't know if you know this or not. A bunch of years ago, I became a certified productivity coach, by era. And after a while I upgraded to master level certification. And yes, I have learned so much from because when I was, first I got into his mastermind, I started to apply these things to my business. And they were so helpful to me that I want to know more, get involved more and also be able to help other people with them. So his method is very simple and easy, because every time there is an email, one of the three things can happen to it. One of the three DS Yep, either you read it, and you're done. There is not much to do about it. A good example is a newsletter, it comes to you. And after you read it, there isn't anything else to do. You don't want it to be there anymore. So the first D is delete, send it away. And we know these days, we don't have to deal with Computer Space issue. We don't we have enough space on our hard drives and in the cloud and all of that. So basically, delete means deleting is from inbox. In fact, it is archiving get I use a gmail interface for My archive, if it's not a gmail interface, basically moving it out of our main inbox. So it doesn't occupy space over there. Because, you know, it's out of sight, out of mind, right? That's what we want. It's out of our sight. It doesn't have to occupy our mind anymore.

Pete Mohr  08:33

You're not going through it and seeing it every time you open your email, right?

Kayvon  08:37

Yes, or just it's not there. Because even if you don't look at it, your subconscious is still picking up on something else. What is that thing? What is that thing? Exactly? When you archive it, it's gone. So that's the first one. Yeah, the other D is do if you can do something about it. Right now. Just go ahead and do it. And this is one of those when we talked about decision-making points. Yeah. Because the rule is, if you can do it quickly, and I'm thinking in the next 60 to 120 seconds, if you can do it in Okay, maybe three minutes. Yeah, right. You do it right now. You don't have to do anything. You know, you don't have to say I'm gonna come back to it later. Yeah. Because that's extra energy spent for a bunch of more decisions. I remember many years ago, when it came to desk organization, and that that sort of thing. They will say touch each paper once, right? It's the same sort of a concept if you touch it, and if you can do something about it. Do it right now. Yep. Don't leave it hanging there. So that's the second. The first one is delete. Yep. And the second one is do Yep. The third one is defer. So different means that you're not going to do it now. Because for some reason, you still need some information to get to you some document you need. All this is going to require more time and efforts from you. So basically, another D, which is a sub task of that you defer, you delegate it to somebody else, now that somebody else could be actually somebody else, because you are not doing this yourself, you just defer it and you delegate this and some others, or you're delegating it to a future version of yourself. So that you say, Hey, I'm going to come back and do this tomorrow at 10:30pm, which is that snooze option in the email. So again, it doesn't remain an inbox, waiting for a decision to be made. The decision is already made.

Pete Mohr  10:36

I love snooze. I use it all the time. I mean, I think it's just such a wonderful feature from the Gmail side of things. I don't think they have it on Outlook, I think you must use it outsource, I can't remember the name of the outsource program that does it. But

Kayvon  10:49

most probably,

Pete Mohr  10:50

yeah, from Gmail, it's just such a great tool, snoozing things. I mean, when I look at snooze, even when it's and scheduling, sending, and all this other stuff, you know, there's so many different tools that you can use to not only create less email overwhelm for you, but for your team, you know, if you're sending people emails at odd hours, because you're up odd hours, you don't have to do that, you know, you can create less overwhelm for their sanity as well by sending it to them tomorrow morning at eight o'clock with just an automatic schedule, you know, with

Kayvon  11:22

Yeah, scheduling, because exactly what you said, don't want to overwhelm them with more disarray make it they just need to see the time that they need to decide. Yeah, that's when are they gonna get it? It works both ways. Yes. And we say all of this, skipping the actual first step in the process of inbox zero, which I think it works well for us. Because now that we know what to do with our emails, the first step is actually is another decision making point, you want to go through this process of the 3ds, with the emails that are actually meant for you, because we all get emails that are sent to a group or newsletter or that sort of thing, or the ones that they are specifically for you, Peter, this this email is from Kay Avon to you. And he's saying something, he's waiting for a response, as opposed to something that is just sent to a group, usually a notification or a newsletter or something that it's not time sensitive. So the very first step is to set up a filter. Again, we're speaking Gmail language, but this applies everywhere else.

Pete Mohr  12:23

Yeah, outlook has filters.

Kayvon  12:25

Yes, you set up a filter for all of the emails that they are not meant for you to not make it to the inbox in the first place, the best way to do it is I have had that for many years. Now, you have this folder called optional. Those are the emails that they are not necessarily for you, you might want to see them or not, is optional. You can call this folder or label whatever you want. But it's the thing that you set up a filter, that any email that is not specifically for you should skip inbox, and just go directly to that folder, or label. Yeah,

Pete Mohr  13:00

I call mine lists and groups. But same sort of, yeah, there you go.

Kayvon  13:03

Let's get some groups. And the easiest way, which will take care of about 90% of them or so is set up a filter for the word unsubscribe, because those emails usually have an option for you to unsubscribe from them. So if there is an email that has the word unsubscribe in it, skip the inbox, send it to that folder. Obviously, some emails don't have that. And they have other options like manager subscription. Or if you don't want to get these emails, click here, you'll see those, and you'll find the word in them to apply the same filter to them. So it's the same thing or sometimes you know, it comes from this email address. So anything from this email address, skip it. So that filter can be expanded upon. But it's the same methodology. Same way of thinking, if it's not, for me, specifically, skip the inbox, go to the optional folder, whatever passes, that filter is meant for me now go through the process of the 3d, either deleted, because I'm done. Or do it right now. And again, we're done to archive by to delete, and or defer, which again, takes it out of the inbox. I am talking to you right now. And on the other top, I see I just received one email because at the beginning of this conversation, I had zero and there is one over there. And I can see this is something that I don't want to do. And archive. I am back to zero again. See, just like, yeah, it's beautiful. So it's taken care of. It is a simple process. It's easy to learn. And after, I don't know maximum a few days, it's easy to adopt as a new habit and way of looking at things. And you and I have been through this and whoever is going to apply this method is going to experience the same. The failure of freedom. It's amazing. It's going to be amazing after that. One of my favorite things which it does not happen. On the Gmail on the web browser is to look at my Gmail on my mobile, because it's has this little picture here. Yeah. That says, your finished day. Nothing in the inbox.

Pete Mohr  15:12

What a great feeling. Yeah,

Kayvon  15:14

yes. Just they have done a great job with visually. Yeah. Even showing us the feeling of fun and playing that. So that's what we want.

Pete Mohr  15:22

Yeah, it is. It is. That's awesome. Well, thanks so much for sharing that today with us cable. I mean, I think we live this life and we want others to live it as well, you know, yes. And I think that's why we wanted to bring this to the podcast today. It's like, this isn't rocket science. This isn't something that takes an incredible programmer to do. There's, there's simple tools, and either of us can help you through that kind of stuff on the side things, all that sort of stuff, too. Is there a key takeaway here today that you'd like to add? Is there anything we missed here? Kayvon, that we

Kayvon  15:56

know I don't think we missed anything important. But what you just said is very important. And I like to repeat it if this is attainable, yes. This is doable. We both have done it. And not rocket surgery. No, I did it. Pete did it so many other people, dear listener, you can do this, too. This is attainable. It is the feedback and the the outcome is certainly worth it.

Pete Mohr  16:21

hours of your life back over a year. It's It's amazing. Right on? Well, thanks, again. Kayvon. If anybody wants to get ahold of you, how did they get ahold of you?

Kayvon  16:30

Yes, well, my website is www.simplify.zone. If you want to get in contact with me, you can go to www.talktokayon.com and book a call with me if that's my calendar appointment link. I'm also working on a program is all around implementation. If you'd like to know more about that, www.simplify.zone/implementation.

Pete Mohr  16:53

Awesome. Awesome. Well, thanks again. And looking forward to the next time we meet on another version of simplifying entrepreneurship. And for now, make it a great day and we'll talk to you soon Thank you Take care. always enjoy my chats with Kayvon. And just love living the last few years in that realm of Inbox Zero, you just won't believe how pleasant it is to look at your inbox when there's only five or 10 or 15 emails in it instead of 1000 or 100, or whatever the case is. It's just a really empowering feeling. So thanks for spending some time with me here on the simplifying entrepreneurship podcast. Think about how you can apply today's simplifying entrepreneurship topic of email, overwhelm, and inbox zero and how you can craft that into part of your business and your life to advance your business and have an even better entrepreneurial life. So if you like the podcast, please share it with your friends and invite them to listen as well. For more information on my entrepreneurial programs, visit www.Mohr.coach. And until next time, make it a great day. And IRonic Media Production

18:17

visit us at www.Ironickmedia.com.