Man, sometimes you’ve just got to hate communication.
Once upon a time, not that long ago, if you wanted to communicate with someone you had two options:
1) Send them a letter
2) Phone them on a landline and, if they weren’t available, leave a message
Then you just had to wait.
Nowadays we’ve got phone, mobile phone, email, messenger services, chatrooms, internet calls and conferencing and social media.
To make it worse… all of that stuff is available on your mobile device, wherever you go, twenty four hours a day and seven days a week.
People now expect you to answer their communications instantly.
Well, in my personal opinion, they can just bloody well wait.
There’s very very little that needs to be answered instantly, in my limited experience.
The working day in the construction industry starts early, usually around 7am.
For some reason, people think it’s acceptable to phone you on your mobile at 7:30am.
Wrong.
Unless they leave a message saying it’s urgent due to a problem with a delivery that’s happening that day, they can phone back on the office phone after 9am.
And I can assure you, 99% of the time when they phone back it’s nothing urgent, and nothing that can’t be done an hour later.
So, if you find your phone is ringing non-stop, then here’s what you need to do…
Ignore it.
But here’s what’s gonna make this difficult… you!
There’s no problem to ignore the calls and leave a voicemail saying you will get back to them as soon as possible.
The folk phoning you will come to accept this very quickly, usually it takes about two weeks, but you have to believe that your business is going to be fine if you don’t answer the calls.
I can assure you it will be.
But psychologically you’re the only person who needs to believe that. And the modern world has effectively convinced you that you need to respond to communications instantly.
The truth is you don’t.
Are you able to change the way you work and go at a slower pace?
I can assure you it’s worth doing 😉
Ciao,
Michael
P.S. If you still haven’t got access to Zuzaman, the free autoresponder service, here’s where you can get it.
What do you think?