The other day, I found this neat inbox stats tool from Front App called Inbox Checkup. (Thanks Product Hunt!) I've been wanting something like this for a while.
Apparently, I respond to 18% of my e-mails, way above the average of 11%, and was #62 out of over 4,000 in terms of e-mails sent. It was happy to know that I'm getting to a lot of things.
Unfortunately, I was also #145 in actually getting e-mails, so what that also means is that while I'm getting to a lot, I'm also missing out on a lot. What is painful is when I know there's that one note I should be responding to or one thing I promised to do that just keeps getting pushed off to the next day. Like a splinter, you feel it distracting you just a little bit.
What's hard is that other people don't understand it. What they've asked you to do will just take a minute. Why is that so hard?
Those minutes add up, though... and you have to make some priorities. I need to call my parents, my nana, respond back to that text about where I'm having dinner tonight, and oh yeah, my softball team needs an extra player for tonight otherwise we'll forfeit, so that's a problem. And that's just personal stuff that doesn't include my desire to go to the gym or get some extra biking in so that I can beat Dave Morgan in our charity challege for the marathon. (Donate!)
I've got things I need to do for my portfolio companies, deals in process, investors of mine asking questions, and the list goes on and on...
And with each new thing, you try and slot it in somewhere... and sometimes, it's after midnight and you're done. Whatever was on that list, well, this teller window is now closed and it will just have to wait.
It's frustrating and there really isn't a good solution, unless someone wants to make extra minutes in the day. I feel like I'm getting to a ton and super efficient--but that doesn't mean I don't feel bad when I fail to recommend that content person to a few VC firms I know, or I didn't pitch that later stage video startup to a couple of investors. There was that young entrepreneur who wanted an intro to the brand rep I knew back in the fall--he's in my mind, too. There are probably about five or ten things just floating around that I never got around to. I have a vertical blind missing from my living room window. There's chicken in the freezer I needed to throw out....like... two years ago probably.
Sometimes, it just falls down the list.