Everything They Say About Alaska is True…

…including the size of the mosquitos. Luckily they hadn’t much come out yet while we were there.  Native Alaskans will tell you that in the 49th state June is Spring, July is Summer, and August is Fall.  Everything else is Winter.  Visiting in June, then, was colorful, spectacular, stunning, and very distracting — in a good way.  🙂

Should you worry about handling VO work on an extended vacation?

Email can be demanding.   But it’s how we get a good many of our leads, right?  So does it make sense to ignore the demands of email while you’re trying to have fun? What if you get a job, or an audition that seems right up your alley?  Yeah!  “What if…”?

There are working vacations, and non-working vacations.  For all the money I spent on this one, I was determined to leave my mobile rig at home.  In other words, a non-working vacation.  As soon as I decided that, I heard a huge internal sigh of relief in my soul.  I had rigged my Gmail account in advance to return an “out-of-office” response to incoming mails.

Not only is internet expensive onboard a cruise ship, but it’s slow.  It was nice not having to pack a mic, a pre-amp, and all the cables, etc. for this trip.  I did bring an iPad (for reading), though…and a laptop.  Maybe that was my first mistake. My excuse was that I might have occasional boring moments in the airport to scrape through email.

How Mountains solved my email guilt.

We all dread returning from even short vacations to a mountain of email.  I get upwards of 250/day.  That’s a metric ton of emails after a two-week vacation!

 I actually DID check email frequently on my laptop when I could during the trip, but with an entirely different approach.  Here’s what I discovered on the ship about email that will forever change the way I handle this daily task.

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Most of it is just not that important.

We sign-up for stuff…we agree to get notifications…we get click-baited…we get phished…and we are “cookie” victims…all of which leads to a crowded mailbox.  Out of a day’s list of, say, 250 emails, maybe 10 of them REALLY matter.

I don't care how many email extensions and add-ons you install to streamline the process...plowing through email can be oh so time consuming Click To Tweet

Parsing/winnowing/prioritizing

Call it what you will, but we can become slaves to the routine, and the seeming demands of email everyday.  We get in a rut.  It becomes a YUGE time-suck.  I don’t care how many email extensions and add-ons you install to streamline the process…plowing through email can be oh so time consuming.  This is when the mountains got in my way.

Reframing in your favor

Having only a little time here ‘n’ there to handle email between glaciers, mountains, moose, and killer scenery in general, I had to make a decision.  I knew I didn’t want to come home to a pile of work, so when I COULD get on the internet, I blasted through ONLY THE ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY stuff. You know it when you see it.  The offer from a client.  The query from an agent about something when you get back. A new prospect.  Everything else is fluff….let it go. 

It has turned into a great habit to keep.

Forget Email Perfectionism or FOMO

Everything on the internet is so redundant anyway.  The chances are high you will NOT miss out on something important, but in the alternative, you WILL keep your sanity, save time, and streamline your processes.

You don’t need Alaska Mountains to achieve this.

Get distracted by some other higher priority.  

Like… your family?  Marketing.  Thankyou notes.  Planning your next coaching session.  Practicing.  Take my word for it.  Getting your head out of the email rut is worth it.  You have an epiphany that this is only one small thing you need to do in short spurts…not a day-long ball ‘n’ chain.

CourVO

[BTW, that pic at the top?  Mt. Denali.  Highest point in North America.  I took that photo with an iPhone and no filter.]