[00:00:09.190] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:09.680] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:10.180] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:11.970] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:14.190] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week with Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have happened and affected our businesses over the last seven days. So we didn't manage to do a recording last week, did we?
[00:00:28.910] - Taylor
No.
[00:00:28.910] - Gordon
We weren't sure we were because you were away doing an experiment.
[00:00:33.110] - Taylor
I was indeed.
[00:00:34.730] - Gordon
So let's just catch everyone up with what happened with that, shall we?
[00:00:40.260] - Taylor
So, the experience or the experiment was kind of living by myself and seeing how I got on. Now, the overall experience, I really enjoyed it. I like the kind of being by myself and experiencing how that is, being the only person in the house apart from the pets. So I enjoyed that. I was kind of a bit ill during it, so I think that my full experience was a bit hindered because I slept quite a lot and didn't really do too much. I enjoyed the cooking, I enjoyed looking forward to cooking my food and kind of having...
[00:01:26.320] - Gordon
You can always cook here you know!
[00:01:27.550] - Taylor
To think about what I need to get out. So that was good. I think one thing that I did find was that I think the whole time I was a bit unsettled, I guess, because it's not my house, it's not the way that I would set up the house, not the way that I...
[00:01:49.360] - Gordon
Plus you didn't have all your things there with you.
[00:01:51.510] - Taylor
Exactly. So my setup and things like that. So I was sitting on the sofa most of the time doing work, just because there wasn't really anywhere, there was a table, but there was no plug socket nearby, so I couldn't just sit there all day. So, yeah, it kind of felt a bit unsettled just because I didn't have the things that I'm used to and kind of comfort things, I guess. But overall I really enjoyed it and hopefully we'll be doing it more in the future.
[00:02:18.010] - Gordon
Very good. Okay. I know you had a bit of an issue with the cat fur as well.
[00:02:23.440] - Taylor
Yeah, allergy.
[00:02:23.440] - Gordon
You had an allergy that made it more difficult, but yes, he wasn't feeling well, but he's feeling much better now.
[00:02:35.590] - Taylor
Yep.
[00:02:35.590] - Gordon
Which is great news.
[00:02:37.230] - Taylor
I had a pretty good routine while I was there, which was nice. Again, it was something that I could kind of easily stick to because there was no-one else to kind of get in the way and pull me to a side and kind of derail me, I guess.
[00:02:52.060] - Gordon
Okay, very good. So on to our topics for the week. Shall I go first?
[00:02:58.900] - Taylor
Okay.
[00:02:59.380] - Gordon
Then you can go and sort of finish off this episode. So my topic is preparing for busy times. So what do I mean by that? Well, next month, September is a very busy time for me. For some reason, it is the busiest September that I have had since I started my records as far as magic shows go. Now, I don't know why that is. Maybe it's the first proper year since COVID that people have decided that they're feeling confident enough to hold parties again, I don't know. Maybe people are sort of going back to school over the last month or so, they've been preparing for school, which goes back in September, and all of a sudden they've realized that September is coming really quickly and they need to get something booked, because I continually have people ringing me saying, "can you do September?" And I've got no slots left. The whole of my weekends, and some of the weekdays in the whole of September, are now completely full, which is great, but I have a feeling that because it's going to be so busy, I'm going to need to take some off time during the week. So, the reason that I wanted to talk about this is that I've got more than one business, and also I've got to run both of them and make sure they continue to run as they should do, but because I know I've got one of them is going to be very busy, it means the other one is going to be a lot quieter. Not because I don't expect there'll be work coming in, but it's because I'm going to be spending all of my energies doing Business A and so Business B is going to be a lot quieter because of the shift in time priority. So, I knew that as we were going through July and August. So what I've done is I've made sure that for Drayson Design, I don't have any big projects that have deadlines. I haven't taken on any work that require the work to be done during September, or by the end of September or by the middle of September; I've set no deadlines for September. And the reason for that is because I knew I was going to be busy. So have a think about what you do in your businesses. Do you have very busy periods? Do you have very quiet periods? What can you do to sort of minimize the disruption of normal everyday tasks that need to be done when you're going to be really busy? That could be that because you're busy, you have to bring someone in to take over some workload for you. It could be that you do what I've done, which is to plan ahead and make sure that you don't have a big workload for that period of time. And if anything comes in, well, by the middle of September, I'll know how busy I actually am and if I've got any spare time that I can then give to other projects. So if anything does come in between now and then, I can look at it and decide at that point whether I can take it on or not. But if not, then it will be October. So the projects will be pushed to October. So, do you have anything to add to that Taylor?
[00:06:33.080] - Taylor
I think just scheduling your work in is a good thing to do from a web design perspective, not doing the project straight away and booking them in so that you can make sure that the projects that you've currently got finish, but you give yourself a bit of leeway if they run over for whatever reason.
[00:06:54.940] - Gordon
Yeah, exactly. It's a bit like... [Taylor sneezes] Bless you, bless you again. It's a bit like a tradesman, for example, who would go out, like, let's look at a builder, for example. They have an estimated time of how long they think a job will take. And I'm pretty sure that they'll leave an amount of time, probably not a lot because they want to get onto the next job, but they'll give the next job an idea of when they're going to start, and that might change. So they've got the work scheduled in back to back, but the start time might change and the finish time might change as well. It might be earlier, might be later. With a builder, I've never known it to be earlier, but it's normally later, but it could be earlier. So yes, it's a matter of prioritizing the jobs rather than the period of time you're going to do it in I think. That's it. That's my little topic for the week. What have you got for us?
[00:08:00.200] - Taylor
So this week I've been working on a new email system. Now this was something that I saw online and I really like the idea. So up until this point, whenever I get an email, I will flag it with the orange flag. And that's basically just my dumping ground to say "I need to look at this," whether that be replying to it, whether I'm waiting for something from someone, or it's just something I'm interested in and want to read, or I just need to access later. Now this became an issue because I ended up with about 90 flagged items which got out of hand and wasn't really working through them. So the new system is based on kind of 'inbox zero.' So when you get email, you look at it once or twice a day, for example, and you categorize them. So you have three folders. You either have an 'action' folder, a 'read' folder, and you have a 'waiting' folder. So, when you go through your emails, if the task or the email can be done in two minutes or less, then do it then and there. So just reply to it or update something in the invoicing or whatever, if it's going to take less than two minutes, if not, you put it into your action folder. If it's something you come across and you think, "oh, I'd like to read that." Maybe it's an article or newsletter, put it into your read folder and that's just going to be there, if you get a chance and you've got a bit of spare time, you can go through and read that. And the last one is waiting. I use this a lot when I've sent off an email asking for content, or I reply back to an email and I put it into the waiting folder because it means I can keep a tab on it, just say, "okay, these are the things, people that I'm waiting for." And I also follow it up with Mail Butler, which is a MacMail plug-in that I use, and I can assign tasks and stuff with reminders and due dates and things, so I can also keep an eye on that. And it sends me a notification that says 'the task is due today,' which is normally like a follow up. And that's the new system. And anything else either gets deleted or archived. And so for a long time, if it was either unread or flagged, it meant I need to deal with it. And if it was read, I'd already dealt with it, but I just left it in my inbox. So this new method, I don't lose any of the emails, I can still search them, I can still find them. However, they're not in my inbox so I can keep an easy control over all of my emails that either I need to deal with at some point when I've got time from the action folder, or I can follow up and make sure that I get the information back that I need.
[00:10:53.440] - Gordon
Okay, that's very good. It'd be good to come back to this actually, and see how you're getting on and if you've made any tweaks to it at all.
[00:11:01.160] - Taylor
Yeah, so a big thing that I like is keyboard shortcuts. I absolutely love them, I use them especially with Alfred. And one thing I always had happen was someone would email me saying, "can you make these changes to website?" I'd be like, "okay, that's fine." So I'd put it in my task management system. However, I don't want to just copy the entire email because there'll be information in between that and so I just wanted to put in 'make changes to X website,' and someone wrote this absolutely amazing Apple script which takes your currently selected email in MacMail and it creates an Apple link. So Apple have these special URLs which start with Message//, or if you've got apps you can put like the app name//. And what this will do is it means that it will open that in the respective apps, so you can do it for Waze, for example, for Google Maps and things like that. So someone created this link to the email and I just paste that into the task description. So then when I go back and say, "okay, make these changes," I've got a link that I can click on and it opens up the email directly to the thread that I have and I can easily read what needs to be done and I don't have to copy data. And obviously I'm always going to be up to date because I'll see the email thread, so if anything new's come in from that since, I'll see them. So, yeah, that's the new system that I've kind of been working on and we'll see how we get on.
[00:12:43.980] - Gordon
Yeah, that sounds very good. It's gone wonky again, I'm just going to fix that. Sorry about that. Yeah, no that sounds very good. And again, automation, your keyboard shortcuts and so forth are good automation, which we always say you should try and automate as much as you can. It does make your life a lot easier, definitely. And email is definitely one of those things that you end up spending a lot of time on. You could spend every day on it, all day if you don't manage it properly. But it depends on the type of business and how fast you need to jump on emails, really. But for what we do, actioning them later is interesting. When you put things in your Wait folder, how are you going to then make sure you go back to them and deal with it? Not the Wait folder, the Action folder. So if you put things in the Action folder, how are you going to know to go back to them and do them?
[00:13:43.740] - Taylor
So I use the block system method that I started using.
[00:13:47.600] - Gordon
But how are you going to know what's in there? Are you going to physically go into that folder and look at what you've got to do?
[00:13:53.160] - Taylor
Yeah, so I try not to keep the Action folder too big. I check them at least once or twice a day, either organizing it or checking the Actions folder, and I'll have a quick scan through and see, "okay, is there anything that's super urgent based on the current day?" For example. But I'll schedule it in as a block.
[00:14:19.950] - Gordon
At the point of receiving the email?
[00:14:24.370] - Taylor
No. It will be, I'll schedule in a block most days just to go through all of the kind of action. Well go through my email which includes checking the inbox; organizing it; and then going through the actions for stuff that is going to take longer than two minutes and go through and see, okay what's something that needs to be done but isn't super super urgent, but it still needs to get done? And I kind of will work through that. And like I said, I try not to keep it too big so there'll only be 20 or so in there maximum, so I can always see. And if there's stuff that's been in there a while the block kind of helps for that, because I can say, "okay, I'm going to spend half an hour on just going through my emails and sorting them."
[00:15:10.850] - Gordon
Okay.
[00:15:12.490] - Taylor
And again, if it's going to take two minutes or less, I'll just do it then and there. That's the biggest part, is I can action a lot of stuff away and stuff that takes two minutes, I just do it then and there because otherwise you're never going to get around to it. And it's one of those things that you end up needing to do, but it's one of those small things you just like "urgh."
[00:15:33.910] - Gordon
And do you archive them off once they've been dealt with?
[00:15:36.400] - Taylor
Yes. So a lot of times action emails will then go straight into the waiting folder because I've sent an email off that I need then to wait for the reply. So I'll just flag it with the other one and it will just move to the other folder. And then if I get a reply and I don't need to reply back I will unflag it and then just to archive it and it just goes straight into the archive and gets removed from everywhere else.
[00:16:03.920] - Gordon
So that's very good. I have an email system that doesn't work quite like that, but it's that I have rules set so that certain emails that come in, I've either set them up and they're automated emails that are coming to me, but I want to know about it. So I look for that name, the title, the subject title, and it gets flagged or it gets put into a smart mailbox. And then for all my customers, for Drayson Design, every customer has their own folder, so once I've dealt with an email, it will get archived into their folder; so that should I need to, I can go back and I can see the whole list of emails that I've sent out, sorry I've received from the customer. And for Magic they just get bundled together under a 'client' folder, which is one big client folder, but they do get archived out, so you end up clearing the inboxes out so that you can actually see that you are getting down to nothing. It's these people who, when I look at their computers and it says they've got 7000 emails unread in their inbox and it's like, "no, I have read them, it's just I haven't marked them as read." I was like, I would struggle with that. I normally have about 500 emails in my inbox, which is still more than I want, but it used to be about 2000, so it's come down a lot, and I do try and get it as low as I can. But yeah, inbox email information...
[00:17:41.720] - Taylor
Inbox Zero.
[00:17:44.540] - Gordon
Yeah, Inbox Zero, is a really good thing to aim for. Anything else you want to say?
[00:17:49.110] - Taylor
No, I think that's everything.
[00:17:50.640] - Gordon
One last thing from me, I believe I read today that Apple are announcing iPhone information on 7 September, I think it is, so that's about just over a week's time. So new information on that when we get it. They may even announce their new OS updates as well, which normally come out around the same time. So when the iPhone comes out, the new iOS comes out and they sort of bundle that with the new MacOS as well. So we may have some things to tell you about in a couple of weeks time when that happens. Because the dates that we do it are going to be missing out. So weeks time for the announcements, following week when we talk about it.
[00:18:39.320] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:18:40.000] - Gordon
Okay. Thank you very much for joining us. As always, you can like, share, and subscribe.
[00:18:45.530] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes, and search for anything we've spoken about.
[00:18:52.440] - Gordon
We are on Facebook and on YouTube every week, and of course the website as well, if you want to go back and see all the past episodes. So until next week, 1 o'clock on Friday, my name is Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:19:06.220] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:19:08.870] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:19:09.450] - Taylor
Bye.
