The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss - Latest Comments in The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

Re: The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

Bryan Souza — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 15:32:46 -0000

Tim,

A friend shared your book with me a week ago, I am now following you on Twitter, and I am inspired by your time-work vision. I have been trying to change education as a teacher for 15 years with a Pepperdine master's degree in Ed Tech, been a real estate broker for 5 years to fund life, work about 80-90 hours a week, and was one of the first beta testers for GMail and have used it to leverage both careers. Exploring the idea of VA doing my email is like being a back seat driver - and it's exciting! Thanks for planting the seed.

Bryan
Fresno, CA

Re: The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

Paul — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 19:37:58 -0000

Tim,

Like everything else I've read here, this was awesome and inspirational! Thank you!

Re: The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

t lin — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 23:09:26 -0000

tim,
i tried to order PX method several times during the past 9 months but failed every time. is there some place or web site i can get a copy?

Re: The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

Wendell — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 22:37:17 -0000

Tim,

Why don't you have an iPhone?

Re: The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

Wendell — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 22:17:40 -0000

Tim,

I use email like a database and often go back into past years to find stuff. Problem is, every year it seems to grow exponentially. How do you archive email, and back it up so it can be easily accessed?

Part of the problem is I'm sort of an email pack rat. But it's my digital diary, sort of.

Re: The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

Wendell — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 17:20:56 -0000

Tim,

I've always thought using web-based mail, linked into my Outlook and Mac Mail, would allow me to access e-mail wherever I found myself. Seems that's part of the problem, wanting to always be in touch with e-mail.

When you use your own Outlook or Mail, don't you need an outside provider? Maybe you don't.

Re: The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

kuemi lee — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 18:03:35 -0000

I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.

Re: The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

Liz — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:23:44 -0000

Hi Tim,

The VA industry has come along way since you wrote your first book. We are now in 2009 and readers are still inspired enough to leave comments on your original blog. This is an amazing testament to your vision.

I wanted to thank you for being so inspirational. My business has grown out of the demand for VA's that your book, articles and blogs have helped generate. We are probably the first VA recruitment agency worldwide.

What are the major changes that you have seen over the past 12 months?

Re: The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

Atlanta wedding photographer — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:02:41 -0000

is this comment here

Re: The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

Atlanta wedding photographer — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:01:33 -0000

thanks for the list. It seems that this would show your clients that you have a well oiled machine no matter where you are and that you are truely living what you preach. I like that it is very detail with specific boundaries. Also, it gives your Va's enough room to make suggests to be more efficient. I really liked the book .... elements of style. Another post that im going to keep for reference.

Re: The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

Craig — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 11:05:55 -0000

We run a Wealth Management firm in the San Francisco Bay Area. I am a big fan of the Four Hour Work Week. It got me inspired to hire a virtual assistant. We have two from a company called Secretary in Israel.

This company hires all American college educated assistants who are living in Israel. Because the economy is not so great over there for those who do not speak the language, this company has been able to find an incredible group of assistants. All have local US phone #s, through VOIP and my clients do not even know where she is calling from. I love the time difference. Both my assistants work late into their nights. So I have coverage in CA until 3:00PM and when I give them projects in the evening my time, iit is their morning - so they are done when I wake up.

My one assistant used to be the Personal Assistant for one of the top guys at Goldman Sachs and my other used to be an account at Deloitee & Touche. They have been able to significantly give me the ability to work on only those things that I can do. DELEGATE DELEGATE DELEGATE - is one of the things that I learned from Tim Ferris. Contacting them is the easiest way to start getting closer to that four our work week we are all striving for. Feel free to e-mail me with questions about Secretary in Israel. I am a big fan because it has changed my business.

Re: The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

Steve Davis — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:00:59 -0000

Hi Tim,

I was just thinking that you should right a tactical outsourcing book. Detailed guidance, strategies, tactics, and implementation steps for outsourcing anything.

For high end support like executive assistants and email managers, where have you found your best ones? (Best country, Best VA website, Best VA company)

Your blog rocks big time. You are changing so many lives every day. Keep up the great work!

Thank you!

Re: The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

Smoke — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 11:28:01 -0000

Nice...i m starting up back with blogging and kinda using inspirations from here and there...

Re: The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

Phillip Roberts — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:21:15 -0000

Tim,

Came across this one tonight just browsing your blog. Love the post, any tips for training a VA to think like me? One of the issue's I have had with my VA is that his emails sound foreign sometimes, otherwise he is great, but I have had a hard time having him send emails or make phone calls on my behalf because of it.

Re: The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

Barbara Langer — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 11:40:58 -0000

Hi Tim! Just a quick note to tell you that your post is translated to spanish and published here: http://www.asistencia-virtu... making reference to your original post for your "Processing Rules".

Have a nice week and thanks again!

Barbara Langer
Asistencia-Virtual.com

Re: The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

Terri Carey — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:56:29 -0000

Myra,

Email outsourcing does not necessarily outsource the ones that are personal in nature or require your expertise but many emails are standard in nature and require standard responses. It does not have to be all or nothing and you do not have to lose the personal touch.

Terri Carey
Virtual Assistant for Coaches

Re: The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

myra — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 05:59:28 -0000

I agree that e-mail often takes up too much time. However, the idea of hiring people to think like you and respond to messages on your behalf is extremely distasteful. Life is about people and relationships - not about fake conversations. It sounds to me like you're having a great time at other people's expense. You're also missing much of what life has to offer by having everyone else live much of your life for you.

Re: The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

timferriss — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:37:28 -0000

@Barbara,

That's fine. Please just indicate the source and link to this post. Thx!

Tim

Re: The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

Barbara — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:42:20 -0000

Hi Tim, I´d like to translate your post and publish it in my new blog. Let me know if I have your authorisation to do so.
Thanks!
Barbara Langer
Director of
Asistencia-Virtual.com

Re: The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

Chicago — Tue, 20 May 2008 12:54:03 -0000

A good man would prefer to be defeated than to defeat injustice by evil means.

Re: The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

Andy Mitchell — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 15:27:13 -0000

Forgive the self promotion here, it's on topic! I produce a Firefox addon called GTDInbox (unfortunately it's restricted to Gmail and Firefox, but the ideas are interesting), that transforms the way you perceive Gmail.

It's main aim is to reduce inbox chaos, by transforming emails into tasks, prioritising them, categorising emails/info/files into projects and generally reconstructing your inbox as a highly efficient personal database. It is even benefical for teams. The website also has some general tips on common woes with email, and how to address them.

Re: The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

Damian — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 15:50:56 -0000

In response to • 65. John Says:
February 5th, 2008 at 5:14 pm

I think what Tim is saying, and has been true in my world, is the easier it becomes for people to throw communication (email, word processing, voice mail) around, the more communication that gets thrown around. And most of the time there is not a corresponding increase in value to the increase in communication.

For example, this particular blog and its extensive comments could probably be boiled down to half or a third. If someone took the time to really write and edit it. I am not saying this to be mean, just stating my opinion. But, by making it easy to throw a lot of information around allows for new ideas, and more ‘noise’. Of course the art of (living, managing your job, managing your life, managing others) is optimizing the ‘signal to noise’ ratio. And my signal may be your noise. Going back to John's comment, any communication is communication. But, certainly a lot of the communication being emailed is CYA (cover your assets), and ‘will you do for me, what I won’t do for myself’ – or noise to many. And since people do not perform much editing on what is written in most emails, it tends to have more noise then other forms of communication.

Just look at how well this comment is not written in communicating the points I was trying to make.
Or - This comment could be an example.

Re: The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

Damian — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 15:45:18 -0000

Responding to Chris Says:
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:31 am

If you have an assistant you are either very lucky, or up the food chain of the corporate world. With that in mind, you probably can get access to a personal email account on your work PC. You probably have more political clout then you think.

1) Make friends with the IT guys to find out what the magic form is that 'God's 3rd level assistant' needs to sign to get around the GLBA/Sox issues and allow special dispensation for you to access email outside the tower of babel (I am assuming from every other corporation, especially Financial services company I have seen).

2) If that does not do the trick, try getting a corporate laptop for travel (also for remote access from home, disaster recovery/planning to be able to work remotely in the event of a disaster-see the disaster recovery plan for your organization for how to play this one). You need to be able to access your work from on the road, and they are often more open for Internet.

3) Talk to some of the geeks around the office or the company (but not directly in charge of IT lockdown of security) to find out what Anonymizer websites (here is your 1st ones - www.anonymizer.com, http://www.answers.com/topi... you can get to.

4) There is a service that can email you a webpage (free) when you send an email - not exactly browsing, but might meet your needs.

5) Drop the $400-800 for a laptop, and $100 for a Sprint card for Cell Internet - This has finally become a viable solution for many - http://nextelonline.nextel....
. The monthly is $60 for unlimited, but keep an eye on the market, it just shifted with unlimited voice plans coming out from 3 vendors this past week. Helio is another one to take a look at.

6) Get a Blackberry or iPhone with Internet access and use that for your personal email accounts.

7) See if all the instant messaging programs are locked out. Many of them are configurable to be able to get around firewalls and standard blocking. Again, look to the young geeks in the area that are happy or productive - they probably already figured it out. You can forward your email to them and then work through that.

8) Try a program like LogMeIn.com (go a little slow in the menu, there is a permanently FREE version, not trial version) that lets you work your home PC from the office. That lets you solve a lot of different problems at once. Of course if you need some of the extra capabilities your can get the paid version, it is pretty cheap. There are a variety of programs/websites like this that allow remote access to your home computer with just a browser access (from work, from a starbucks, from a cruise ship). A guy I know used it to continue client support while dragging his family through Poland.

By the way I have been using multiple accounts segmented by the different parts of my life for years. While I am still spending way to much time reading email -hence the reason for reading the blog after the book to start shifting my life - it helps a lot in shifting from project to project. Toughest part is getting the habit to check all projects on a regular basis.

I hope there is a solution in there somewhere that your can implement.

Re: The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

Mitch — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 22:53:15 -0000

How do I set up agreements and negotiate terms with manufacturers or distributors of products I want to sell online, without keeping stock?

Re: The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again

Georgio — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 05:58:52 -0000

In your article, 2 sentences before "read The Elements of Style" you use "too" instead of "to". Maybe you (or your team) should read "The Elements of Style" 1 more time.

###

Hi Georgio,

That was written by one of my assistants, as indicated. That's why I asked them to read it :)

Tim